Wishing all my Canadian friends a belated Happy Thanksgiving on Sunday!
My Sunday was one of grey skies and rough seas. With the consistenly strong wind, seas remained up and, being just aft of the beam, were constantly testing my balance as we were knocked about by oncoming waves. Typically, as I write this on Monday morning, we're rocking and rolling most of the time with the wave action - but the wind and seas do both seem to be dying down slowly.
I was relieved to find that the wind generator, a German-made Superwind, was working well - the confirmation came overnight when the wind was strong and I could see a good charge coming in to the batteries. Solar charging has not been very good with the lack of sunshine so I've run the main engine in neutral occasionally. I still need to change the small genset's water-pump, with its newly-replaced impellor, before I can run that for any length of time. It's way more efficient for battery-charging than running the main engine - and, anyway, the main diesel engine doesn't like being run under no load. If the seas die down a touch more, I'll have a go at that.
I'm feeling rather frustrated at not being able to post photos. I'd not had enough time to go over all the possibilities just before leaving to realise there was a problem there, having been told that, in one case at least, there was a simple solution - but that didn't work out. I've been trying various alternatives and I'm either getting messages that I need to update or, where I have updated, there's now a problem as a result... or a computer is simply not 'seeing' another USB device and its photos.... Still a couple of possibilities to explore. I'd been lookng forward to being easily able to show scenes around Nereida as we travel on.
I must thank again GMN/Redport for their loan of an Aurora terminal giving a satellite connection for phone calls, tracking and emailing. The links to my track are given on my website Home page. I'm posting my own positions daily to Winlink because that shows my track for up to a year whereas the satellte one deletes positions after a short time - but it's automatic and hourly so very up-to-date.
We're passing Cape Blanco now - well over 150 miles off! The Oregon/California border is not far to S. Next is Cape Mendocino - another Cape, notorious for strong wind and bad seas, to be passed with a good offing.
A good way further south is Cape Arguello with Pt Conception close by - another area notorious for strong winds and rough seas. Reminds me of passing the Capes down the Atlantic coast of Portugal - a similar situation with winds invariably increasing a lot on approach - the 'Cape Effect' occurs all over the world! The effect here on the Pacific coast of California is enhanced by the geography behind the coast and the sea floor configuration.
Just after I shook out the two reefs in the mainsail earlier, getting us back to speeds of ~7kt, a group of large white-sided dolphins came rushing over, to play around Nereida - always so lovely to see them!
Sadder was finding a small bird fall on deck from the folds of sail as the reefs were released - all-dark-brown with a slightly lighter band on its wings, black eyes and beak - a storm petrel? Caught by the wind generator, I suspect.
I actually felt over-heated during the night! My hat is only worn on deck now and one warm layer has been positively put to one side...
1200 PDT - end of Day 5. We made 157 n.ml. DMG over the 24 hr period.
Position & weather report posted to Winlink.org and Shiptrak (using my US callsign of kc2iov) not long after midday PDT (=1900 GMT):
TIME: 2018/10/08 20:25GMT LATITUDE: 42-34.07N LONGITUDE: 128-26.29W
COURSE: 199T SPEED: 7.0kt WIND_SPEED: 13kt WIND_DIR: WNW SWELL_DIR: NNW SWELL_HT: 2.5m CLOUDS: 100%
BARO: 1020hPa TREND: 0 AIR_TEMP: 19.0C SEA_TEMP: 18.0C
COMMENT: 157ml in 24hrs. Passing Cape Blanco, on to Mendocino. Sky getting lighter, hint of sun