Heavy boat, light winds, big ocean, pure joy.
Looking at the weather files and trying to make sense of it… with good tunes on the stereo.
This boat weighs 20 tons before you load enough fuel, food, and gear for three weeks onboard. And in our instance, a few dudes too.
Before leaving I was dreading the inevitable calms that would intercept us from time to time on the crossing but tonight on the 0100-0500 watch, I think I’m learning to love the light stuff.
Tonight’s fickle breeze is occasionally touching 8kts, and the waves leftover from some former firmer breeze somewhere else, are challenging the sails to beat gravity and stay full. But somehow, this big girl is still moving.
The basement is in the high threes, but for a good stretch of time with a few degrees of autopilot correction she’ll fly at five and change. When she does you can really feel the rhythm and it’s sweet. It’s a bit of a mindset change.
On a normal coastal delivery if we go sub 5kts the motor is on. But out here fuel is so precious that you MUST eke every mile of “free” distance you can. And it is proving to be really fun and enjoyable.
The strategic goal right now is to ride this light heading wind until we can’t stand it any longer. The standing orders before were to not sail north of west, but our heading is 285, and after watching the GRIB file that just downloaded, I think we’ll hold until we see 320. I’ll go upwind in 8 so I can broad reach in 20 any day. If we’re right… that’s close to what we can expect over the next day or so.
We have a marker, too. Six hours ago we split tacks with a boat that has been tracking close to our performance. They may be bigger or smaller, heavier or lighter—their ais data is scanty. We think they are faster upwind and we are faster downwind. We may never see them again and we won’t know how long they ran their motors or what private puffs they found on their routes, but I’m hoping to see them in our rearview a few days from now when we greet the NE trades or they find us. It’s always a race.
Puff on. The display just showed the wind hitting 9. Time to adjust a sail and see if we can’t turn that speed up to 6!
Safe watch. kb out.