Coyote's Log

Today we have had another great spinnaker run. We set the kite at 0600 this morning, and just took it down at 1800 (6pm), a very nice 12 hour run. The Gribs showed that we would be headed around 1700 today, turns out it happened at 1800, the detail and accuracy of the Gribs is amazing. (Grib file shows barometric pressure, wind force and direction and wave height. We averaged 7.5 knots (SOG) for 12 hours with the kite up, now we are running at 7 knots with the 135% jib. Winds are back, 17-22 knots and nearly on the nose. We are reefing now, it is 0330. We have clearly escaped the clutches of the High, and the barometer is now dropping daily. It now stands at 1022 mb. We are maintaining our latitude of 38N, the same as Point Reyes, so we can reach off to SF once we get close to the coast. We understand that the transponders we are carrying and Tracking site for the Pacific Cup is now down. Our current position is 38.00N x 131.41W. There may be some other tracking page at www.pacificcup.org, but we are unsure. We can tell we are getting close to home, with the temperature finally dropping in the past few days. Now watches at night are much colder. This requires thermal underwear, fleece pants and shirts, jackets, heavy socks, boots and foul weather gear. Tonight during my 1900-2300 (7pm to 11pm) watch, the fog was so heavy it rained and rained, the sails pouring water off of them. Getting ready for bed now requires getting off the wet gear, jackets and all the under layers. Now, just the past 2 days have required sleeping bags to keep off the nighttime chill. We have traveled 1892 miles so far and have 435 to go, looks like the return trip will be ~2347 miles. We still have some water in the starboard tank, but have just switched to the port tank which has remained untouched at 55 gallons. So a few of us took showers, warm showers in the head, and boy was that refreshing! It has only been 13 days since my last shower, but it felt good anyway… (actually, we have been bathing daily with bath wipes, which have done a terrific job at keeping everyone fresh.) Tonight’s dinner was Hungarian Goulash with fresh baked chocolate cookies, a wonderful meal for a overcast day. The past day or two have been overcast, at times fog so thick it is raining at night. Today has been nice, but sun only for half an hour. We still have some frozen prepared and frozen meats, enough for 5 more home made meals, and enough pasta and other items to last us another two weeks or so, and one more frozen cherry pie. Boat batteries were at 100% charge rate while we needed to power a few days ago, now we need to charge twice a day to keep them up. Good news is that once we get the engine on, we manually combine the batteries, charge them at 1300 rpm and within no time, we are charged up again. This is sure a relief, as you know a week or so ago, we were having fairly major battery charging issues. Auto has been doing the majority of the driving, even with the spinnaker up, the freezer continues to keep our food frozen solid, AIS looking for ships constantly, Radar doing 10 minute sweeps for approaching traffic, etc. so there is constant drain on the batteries. If the winds hold, it looks like we will be in late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning. (No Dan, I am not coming to work on Thursday!) 382 miles to go now„„ Coyote