AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/09/14 20:06
LATITUDE: 15-34.86S
LONGITUDE: 157-24.56W
COURSE: 291T
SPEED: 7.0
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 22
WIND_DIR: E
WAVE_HT: 0.7M
WAVE_PER: 6
SWELL_DIR: ESE
SWELL_HT: 2.7M
SWELL_PER: 6
CLOUDS: 30%
VISIBILITY: 15
BARO: 1017
TREND: 1
AIR_TEMP: 29.4C
COMMENT: Beach House – En ROUTE – Bora Bora to Suwarrow (Day 2 – 183 nm)
Note to those \”at sea\” or cruising who are getting this report directly. Once we arrive at Suwarrow, we\’ll drop you off the list unless you tell us otherwise.
The reports are also available at our homepage: www.svbeachhouse.com
Yesterday\’s major point of interest was WIND! Lots of it. We\’ve had 20-28 knots for most of the last 24 hours. Some seas have occasionally been 4 meters, but those are the oddities. We gybed to starboard tack just before writing this entry and we\’ve 354 miles to go, still planning on arriving sometime on Friday. We\’re getting our sea legs back and getting to do a fair amount of sail handling on this voyage. All the new and repaired gear is performing admirably. Someone knock wood quickly please, I already have!
We\’ve carried 2 reefs in the main and our staysail poled out to weather and have been able to average 7.6 knots over the last 24 hours. When we left Bora Bora, we thought we\’d make the trip in exactly 4 days, but wanted the full daylight hours in case we were slow or had other issues on arrival day. Well, we\’ve been fast but are still sailing extra miles as we\’re \”tacking downwind\”. I expect this will add close to 40 miles to the entire trip. The spinnaker pole is heaven sent on this point of sail as we can sail with the apparent wind at 145 degrees, keep our speed up, sail fewer miles and most importantly, keep the waves more on our stern. This prevents the ugly effect of the stern being pushed all around and stops us from rounding up toward the wind and keeping the boat flat, happy and mostly comfortable. The angle of the waves becomes useful energy as well, being more or less, directly behind us. It keeps the auto pilot from having to do too much steering as well. It\’s all good!….
The winds should lighten late in the day, down to around 17-22 knots and with that, we\’ll start looking at adding some sail area to keep up our speed and get us to Suwarrow during daylight hours on Friday.
We\’ve been checking in on the Pac Sea Amateur Radio Net daily at 0300 Z on 14300 mhz. The signals from the US and NZ have been terrific. Chuck of s/v \”Jacaranda\” was running the net last night and he sounded like he was in our cockpit!.
And for those of you who remember \”Crap Shoot\”, we had one of his relatives sleeping on the solar panel last night and now I\’ve got a lot scrubbing to do.
When the Boobie woke up, he took one look at me and decided he\’d already overstayed his welcome….:-) Of course, we have photos!
Keep in touch (KIT!),
Scott and Nikki