avionbianca   Blog for s/v Avion

Day 3

The Wind Has finally arrived with Vengeance

Day 3 8:00 A.M. (1919 Miles to Hawaii)

At 10 P.M. when I came on my watch Avion had just crossed longitude 124 and true to John’s prediction the wind was filling. I got some decent sleep on my down time so I was willing and able to contribute. Kent and David were on top side and had big grins because we were finally making way. The winds were moderate in the low teens and continued build during my shift. By the end of my shift the asymmetrical spinnaker was too much power for the boat so we planned to take advantage of the extra hand to raise the jib topper and lower the spinnaker. This is the order because you do not want have a bare head while racing, that tends to be slow. Nico in his normal coaching fashion went over the procedure we were to follow and who was going to do what. Since I was already below and had partially taken off my foul weather gear I was selected to be the squirrel, this is the person below the fore hatch that frantically pulls the spinnaker down into the peak berth where we store all of the sails. So the jib topper went up and the spinnaker came down without a hitch. After two hours of my 4 hour watch at the tiller I was tired and ready for bed.

By the time of my next watch at 6 A.M came on the wind had continued to build to up to 25 knots. Before I came up they had put a reef in the main sail and we were seeing consistently 8 knots of boat speed. Our peek speed while I was at the helm was 9.50 knots, this is infinitely better than 24 hours earlier when we were measuring our boat speed in 4 100th of a knot. We may just make it to Hawaii with some time to party before we have to sail back.

Day 3 5:00 P.M. (1850 miles to Hawaii)

We raised the rope antenna for the SSB and tuned into the Children’s Hour to see if our position has improved. The logic here is that is that being a medium displacement boat that is relatively heavy has a more difficult time making its speed rating than the lighter boats in our fleet. We have been hoping for stronger winds where we can realize her full potential. As suspect we did improve our position by 1 so we are now in 3rd place. Our goal is to continue to improve all the way to Hawaii.
All is good on board with only a few minor mishaps. We are all healthy, eating well and in good spirits. The boat listing to port with the increased speed is causing it a little more difficult to maneuver around and getting all the foul weather gear on to go up onto watch. It also makes it difficult to write and one of the issues was that the inverter I brought doesn’t want to charge my laptop that was easy to use in my berth. Now I’m having to us the onboard computer at the nav station with a strap holding me from falling over backwards with the list of the boat. We did see a few minor squalls today that spit a little rain and increased our wind by about 5 knots periodically but basically steady winds with a slight decrease over the course of the day. Currently we are seeing 12 to 13 knots of wind with 7 knots of boat speed with a reefed main. At this rate we should be able to finish around our estimated time.