We can’t complain, we had seven lovely days of sailing and fishing. The freezer is full of passage meals and freshly caught fish. We’ve only burned about 3 hours of diesel so we’ve got about 7 days of reserves. That’s about 1000 miles we can motor if we must. The weather has been spectacular, sunny and warm. Seven days of blissful sailing, albeit slow at times, but lovely calm seas and totally relaxing.
That all changed overnight, and today we’ve been beating close hauled into winds from high single digits to about 22 knots. The seas have been building, wind waves mostly, so it’s gotten lumpy, and there’s a mystery swell running from the Northeast that occasionally hammers us with spray going over the cabin top. Not terribly relaxing, certainly not blissful, and a bit rough to manage a fish so no lines out today
The latest weather forecast shows all kinds of blue holes developing during the coming days, and the only way to avoid all that becalming lack of wind is to press on North as hard and fast as we can. Looks like we might need to get as high as 45 degrees latitude before we’ll be able to stay above it all and enjoy a nice Westerly or Southwesterly breeze. The Pacific high just has never really stabilized this season, so it’s like playing whack-a-mole in reverse, dodging the blue holes to stay in the wind.
I’ve spent some time troubleshooting the port engine fuel system today, replacing fuel filters and looking for contamination. All good, and the system is now primed, but it might be the lift pump is beginning to fail. Once the engine is started it’ll run, but it seems to lose prime occasionally and I can’t find a vacuum leak. Fortunately our pal Spike the brilliant boat technician and small aircraft designer is happy to offer advice, so soon enough I’ll know what’s not wrong. There may be some Yanmar parts in our near future, but for now we’ll make do.
What’s really odd is because of the shape of the Earth we’re closer to lots of Alaska than we are to the Strait of Juan de Fuca which leads in to the Puget Sound and Seattle, Washington. From our position it’s only 1212 nautical miles to Kodiak, 1544 to Glacier Bay, and 1632 to the entrance to the Strait. Given that we’re going to have to sail North a lot farther to get around a big blue hole before we can really turn to the East, Alaska might start looking pretty darn inviting. We’re only insured up to Ketchikan, but that might be remedied with a phone call and some $$$. In truth we’re content with our plan to enjoy the Puget Sound this season then aim for Alaska for a full season next year, but still, it’s tempting. At the end of the day the sailing weather could decide for us. All that blah blah blah aside, if we can just get into the Westerlies above the blue holes it should be a good sail all the way to Port Angeles. I guess we’ll see what happens.
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