avionbianca   Blog for s/v Avion

+We made it. Sitting at the fuel dock now. Safe and wet. It is hot here. Feels good. Time for showers, or maybe the Atomic Hotel room is ready…

We are now on the final leg of our trip back to the “mainland”. We are heading for the Columbia River Basin in Oregon. Why are you going there, you might ask. We departed for San Francisco.
The answer is this is what the weather allowed us to do. We were delayed at the start of the trip by the lack of wind north of Hawaii, and we were diverted at the finish by a gale force event with heavy winds and seas. I think it s wise to avoid the heavy weather, since we had the information and opportunity to make a choice.

We almost got to Latitude 46 before turning eat this morning. As we have sailed north, the air has become colder. After 10 months in Hawaii, the cold air feels very cold. We have the good Musto and Gill foulies and lots of layers of clothing, so we can go up and sail at night for 3 hours; but hands and feet are very cold at the end of it. Even Jimmy is wearing socks and gloves.

We have worked our way north about 600 miles off the Oregon coast. There is not a lot out here. We saw a dead whale three days ago. I saw it an thought is was a boa, but as we got closer, i seemed like it was rather low in the water. It was also bright white, and not shaped like a boat. From the top of a wave, e got a better view and it looked a sail boat laying on it’s side, with it’s mast in the water; maybe it had lost it’s keel. But then, it suddenly was clear that it was a very large, dead whale. It was bloated, and birds all over it. The large flipper off to he side is what looked like a sail. Passing by, we were glad to be up wind.

Two days ago a very large pod of maybe 300 Dolphins came up from behind and passed us. A group of about 20 came over and played with Avion. They shot back and forth in from of the bow, catching some kind of pressure and shooting up on the other side. Four or five Dolphins swan right next to the bow in a line, and would go up and down, repeatedly. They clearly were having fun, and we caught their energy. Free ranging animals saying hello to humans. A gift.

We have been monitoring fuel, water and food, and being reasonable about use. But I have no meter on the propane tank. Megan was feeling like it might run out anytime, however, so I cooked up the last of our stuffed chicken, 4 cups of rice in the pressure cooker, and some corm, intending to have left-overs. Well, this morning, when Megan got up for the 3:00 am shift, the propane for a pot of coffee would not come on. The propane is gone. Since it is now light at that time of day, we all woke up and discussed this event. It is not the worse thing to go wrong; it means not more hot water or hot food. But we have the left-overs, snacks and crackers, some cabbage (for a cole slaw), peanut butter, end Ensures. We can make it for 3 days.

The boat is sailing east with vigor at 6 to 7 knots in 15 knots of wind. We are heading for the Astoria Marina. They have fuel, bathrooms and showers. We will get Jimmy to the Amrack train so he can go back to Alameda and work. Megan and I will rest and reprovision Avion, nd depart again in 3 to days. We will wait for a good weather window. After this trip, and 3 day sail down the coast to SF seems like nothing. But, stay tuned…

Friends who have made the passage from Hawaii to San Francisco told me that the last 500 miles of the trip are the hardest. This seems to be true in our case as well. Our weather and routing advisor alerted us to the fact that there is a gale force weather event predicted for northern California for next week, right around the time we had planned to arrive.

Update

Position at 02:00 PM:
Lat: 37′ 21.00
Lon: 145′ 40.000

Conditions:
Wind: 225 knot ave.
Seas: rough, 8-19 ft., high wind choppy

Boatspeed: 7.1 plus
Heading: 080 degrees ave.

Fuel: 50 gallons, x 2.6 hrs per gallon, x 4 knots = about 500 mileS Water: 40 gallons

Notes:
–We turned the corner and headed east at 08:30 yesterday morning. Old salts refer to this as a symbolic “halfway” mark. We still have more than a 1,000 miles to sail, but it feels very good to be heading east, and we are well positioned for our run to San Francisco.
–We have plenty of wind now along Latitude 38, just below a low pressure system to the north.
–We changed watches to 2 hours on, as the driving is rather intense. Two on, four off.
–We are running along at more than 7 knots with a strong and consistent 25 to 27 knot southwest wind in a broad reach.

Tom, Megan ad Jimmy
s/v Avion

Hello:

Summary:
Today has been a beautifully calm and quiet day out in the middle of the ocean. THe water is glassy like a lake in New England. We are in a wind hole, and we decided to embrace it. We motor-sailed under the main overnight, and then shut down the motor around 10am. After some breakfast, we proceeded to make two important repairs (see below for details). We were visited by exhaling humpback whales and a large pod of dolphins jumping in all directions, as the passed by the boat. Jimmy had the watch from 3 to 6pm, so Megan and I took naps and relaxed to the gentle swells rolling in from the north west.
Megan cooked chicken for dinner. We will soon start the engine to head north 80 miles to Latitude 38. From there,we will finally turn east, and by Tuwsdaty evening will be positioned to catch the south west wind on a broad reach.

Position on 6/12 around 19:30:
Lat: 36′ 39.000
Lon: 49′ 29.000

Conditions:
TWS: 3.2 to 4.3
Seas: Calm

Boat:
Heading: 003′
Boatspeed: 1.4 Knots
–Tonight we have about 80 miles to get to our next waypoint APO6 at Lat38/Lon149’45. Wind from the southwest is predicted sometime Tuesday evening and all day Wednesday.
–The next waypoint after this is APO7 at Lat39/Lon132’50, about 350 miles to the east. From this point, we will have 928 miles to go to San Francisco, due east.

Notes on Repairs:
–After some breakfast, we proceed to repair a 18″ rip in the leech of the main sail, between battens 3 and 4. We applied wide sail tape around the outer edge, over both sides, and sowed on both sides of the tear, along the leech. It should hold in heav wid.
–Megan went up the mast to investigate the break in the starboard runner attachment. It cannot be repaired. So, she took the starboard spinnaker halyard and redirected it through the upper shrouds, so we could run it directly to the stern of the boat. I connected it to the original running back and checkstay 3-way junction, and back to the stern pulley, with a piece of spectra. This is now a fully functional repair of the running back. So we can tack as needed in heavy weather and not worry about the mast.

It now looks like we will need about 19 to 20 days to complete this trip. This is a return delivery, not a race, so time is not important as long as we have enough fuel. We still have about 650 nautical miles of fuel capacity, so we will be okay. We still have plenty of food and water. All we need now is wind. Wind means free miles.

Tom and Megan
s/v Avion

What a difference a day makes, or in our case, two days.

Two days ago, we caught a fish. This was a “reel” team effort. He was a big Dorado, over 3 feet and about 35 pounds. He took up half of the cockpit while flopping around. Jimmy claims we caught it because he spit on the lure, which Hawaiian fishermen believe gives them good luck. Megan, the real fisher-person on board, was optimistic enough to put the line out, so she deserves much of the credit. I also deserve some credit, because I decided that the fancy pink lure that was the hot color for catching tuna around Oahu was not working for us, and put the good old cedar plug back on the line. As I said, a team effort.

A fish needs to be dressed quickly, so it can go to dinner. I had been talking about sharpening my knives for awhile now, but there was always some other thing that had to be done first. This fish got me motivated to get out the old sharpening stone and olive oil and get to it. In the meantime, Megan got the Listerine and put the Dorado to sleep; the alcohol kills a fish instantly. We then had to move the jerry cans to open up the spot where I dress fish on Avion, on an area of non-skid surface, outside the cockpit. I have been studying how the Kewalo Harbor fishermen dress their fish on the docks over this past winter, so I just knew how to dress this big boy. Cut the head off first; open and clear the guts; open up the anus to the tail; then cut out the spine, or the back fin; then slice off nice big hunks of meat. Then went down to the galley and rinsed off the blood. I cut the meat into cookable fillets, and put them into zip locked bags. In about 30 mintues, we had at least ten pounds of nice fresh fish in the frig.

We had some sail changes to make, that took priority for the next two hours. The conditions were getting heavy, and there was too much pressure on the mast and rudder to go overnight. I decided to drop the sails, and clean things up. so, I was the first to cook-up a piece of our fish. My favorite way to cook fish is in butter on a frying pan, which I did. Life was good,a nd I went and did my three hour shift with good energy.

Yesterday, Jimmy and I cooked a proper fish meal for the whole crew. Fish, onions and pineapple, smothered in mayonase, covered with tin foil and baked for 40 minutes. Jimmy learned this recipe in Lahina years ago. We also decided to make a coleslaw with cabbage and pineapples, since the Pineapples on board are in that perfectly sweet state that demands being eaten. The challenge was preparing all this food while sailing in heavy conditions, with a modest but variable heel. One person could not do it; or rather, it would take one person a long time to do it (cook). Jimmy was game, so I offered to help. Basically, I cut stuff up, and Jimmy put it in the pan, in the right sequence. Doesn’t sound like much, but it was a true act of teamwork. Needless to say, the fish was delicious.

As I just mentioned, we cooked while sailing in heavy conditions yesterday. To be more specific, “heavy” meant windy, bouncy and wet. The waves were 4 to 5 feet, and wind was 16 to 20 knots. These conditions are nothing special to an ocean sailor, but yesterday the combination of wind, waves and the angle of our heading also made it wet. An occasional wave would splash the bow at such an angle as to push a wall of salt water up into the air, and then the wind would blow it back into the cockpit, where one or two of us would be sitting while we drove, and drench us. We wore our Gortex foulies to stay dry, kind of. The water found it’s way down my neck, through my wrists and down my arms. My pants were just soaked though. Jimmy put up his special built-in head covering, to protect his head from the water. I just wore one of my old Red Sox hats and ducked behind the bill to protect my face and cover my glasses, sort of. As soon as I would dry them off, another wave would hit. It was a grin and bear it kind of wet sailing. It would have been more fun if it was not also growing colder during the day. We have crossed Latitude 30 now, which means that we have left the warm climate of Hawaii behind (Lat 21).

Another big event yesterday was refilling the fuel tank. It took three jerry cans, or 14 gallons (minus a third of a gallon per jc). We had used the engine for exactly 40 hours, at that point. So, we now know for sure that we can get 13 hours per jerry can. At an average of 5 miles per hour, we get 65 miles per jerry can. We have ten jerry cans left for a total of 650 miles of motoring. So far, we have needed to motor for a hundred miles at a time, twice, and we are now motoring again. There are secondary advantages to motoring, like running the refrigerator and the Dometic freezer unit, charging up the batteries, and devices like cellphones, computers and headsets. Megan, the economics major, says we have enough fuel to run the motor for 10 hours a day, so we are good. If she thinks so, then we are.

Today, we are now motor-sailing again. The wind is in our face, so we have taken down the sails, turned on the motor and let the auto-pilot drive. The boat is bouncing around, but generally flat, so we can move around and cook some food for breakfast. I just sent off our position report to Rick the Weatherguy. He is providing us with a route consisting of waypoints every two or three hundred miles, with updates every third day. I can download and analyze the GRIB files, but he has deep experience guiding boats through daily changes in weather patterns. We are happy to have him working with us. I might as well share it with you, to finish off this blog posting. It is dry and technical, but full of fun facts. Enjoy…

Current Position at 6:10 AM is as follows:
Lat 28’39.960
Lon 154’02.084

Conditions:
We took the sails down yesterday afternoon and motored overnight. Boat speed is a little over 5 knots. There is a light wind from the west (250) at 8 to 10 knots, but it is variable, and while we could sail to it, we would not go very fast or far. The sun is out, and the sea state is calm.

Notes:
We are heading north. It is nice to have the boat be flat while we motor. I hardly even noticed the sound of the engine anymore. It is running smoothly at 2000 RPMs. I cooked a pretty tasty meal in the pressure cooker last night; steak with onions and carrots, and rice. Crew said it was good, but they would say that about anything hot. I expect the winds to fill in from the west today, but be variable, and swing around to the northeast. Could be some squalls and rain. Might try to sail, but could just continue to run the engine through it. Will have to refill the fuel tank soon, it is just below half (22 gallon capacity).

Tom
s/v Avion

We have already lost track of time. Today is the span of time between your last 3 hour shift, getting some sleep, and when you are up next in the cockpit for 3 hours. Driving a boat for 3 hours is intense, as there is no road ahead, just a general heading desired and the tradeoff between the wind and the waves. Sometimes they do not let you go in the direction you would prefer and you just have to take what you can get. At least out here in the ocean, there is no traffic to contend with. We are alone already. No signs of civilization, other than some trash floating by occasionally.

We had our first equipment failure. It is no critical, but we considered turning back, as i is not trivial. The starboard (right) side running back attachment poibnt to the mast snapped. The conector is a piece of stainless steel, and it just broke in half. It may have been cracked for awhile now, as they was some browning around one side. Fortunately, the running backs have two points of contact with the mast; the checkstays attach mid-way, and provide a secondary adjustment point. So, my analysis is that the checkstay can take the load when we are on a starboard tack. The port side running back and checkstay are fine, so we will be able to make port tack and sail east at some point with no issues there. The only concern for now is sailing north. We have some risk, but it is manageable, nd we might be able to repair it if we have light winds for a day or two.

We have seem all conditions already, blowing like snot (30 knots plus), 20 to 25 knots (wet), and today, 10 to 14 knots of light wind. The prediction is for very light winds ahead, and we will have to motor. We were happy to have the boat be flat and dry for awhile today. Megan cooked a wonderful breakfast. We dried our foulies. Jimmy came up into cockpit with his board shorts, Spinlock PFD and no shirt. I got out my big sun hat. Megan used the sprayer to rinse off the salt. When the wid came back in the afternoon, we were ready.

Okay, enough for now. I am due up in the cockpit to start my shift. It might be Monday soon…

We are in the Pailolo channel in 30 knots of wind, boat speed is 8.5 knots. We have the second reef in and the #4 jib. Avion feels good, and we are happy to FINALLY be underway. San Francisco here we come…