After changing into some new sails yesterday evening we continued at a good clip, and made a 151 mile day. Unfortunately, Green Buffalo and Hooligan each made 25 more than us. There goes the chance. I wonder why Hooligan was doing so poorly on the day before. They may have had some problems, which they obviously have overcome. I took a look at the boat behind us, Cassiopeia. They are some 90 miles behind us, which sounds like a safe margin, but they have a better ratings with the consequence that we owe them 14.95h! Assume an average speed of 7 kn and this translates into 105 miles. So simply to escape them we have to gain an additional 10 miles at least. Unfortunately, they gained 10 miles on us last day.

We are now replacing our second jib with a bigger one. However, that second one had never been raised on Cirrus before. Let's see what problems come up.

The Pacific Ocean is not that pacific any more. Waves are a good 3 meters, and higher on occasion. The boat is pushed by the waves like a baby stroller by a bulldozer. Wild boat movement is still the norm. The waves are coming at an angle of about 40 degrees from behind, making prediction of the movement difficult. They are grabbing Cirrus at the starboard stern end, both lifting her rear and pushing her sideways, resulting in a rolling motion to port, and often bringing the rail under water. That would not be so bad, but then the wave passes under the boat, lifting the bow, and pushing the boat to the other side, letting the boat swing all the way until the starboard rail is under water. If this had happened in the first days, we would all still be green down to the toenails. So we manage, but the dinner cruise is over.

Speaking about dinner, we are scraping the bottom of our food supply. We usually had fish by this time, but so far we are out of fishing luck. It may have to do with the fact that we had no fishing line out yesterday and today at least until now. But yesterday nobody was in the mood to possibly also having to handle a fish; the sea was a bit too wild. Today we had one of those canned soups. Hmmm. Either we get fish or we sail faster.

Right now we have a sunny sky with lots of clouds, limiting the impact of the hot sun and making it really pleasant in the cockpit. Down below it is, however, rather warm and stuffy. The night was completely overcast, stars were visible only occasionally. Apart from the two nights in the beginning, we never had a full, starry sky again. Since we still have a 3/4 moon, the night is rather bright nevertheless, even if sky is fully overcast. That doesn't mean you can easily distinguish between water and sky. The dark grey water is separated from the light grey sky by a blurry mid grey stripe, the horizon.

Click on the weather map on the Cirrus blogsite for a little surprise. On the bottom right you will notice that hurricane Carlotta has left the Mexican coast and goes after us. I think we will be faster than Carlotta, but let's see.

No ship nor boat traffic the last day.

Aloha,
Ulli

position at 1330 PDT: 25N00, 150W20, COG: 248M, SOG: 7.8kn, ETA: Mon, July 17, 2006 1619 HST