Destination Reached -- Kauai - Neah Bay, Day 25

We motored through the night in fog and light wind, avoiding ships revealed by the AIS and following recommendations from Tofino Traffic. At UTC 1515, which is 8:15 AM local time, we arrived at our destination, Neah Bay. We refueled the boat, enjoyed a breakfast at the Warmhouse restaurant, and took showers. Needless to say, we are feeling great!

At UTC 1515, August 6, 2012,  we arrived at our destination, 48 22.887 N, 124 35.164 W, after traveling 2660 miles from Port Allen, Kauai, Hawaii.

Tomorrow we plan to be in Port Angeles, the following day Port Townsend and then, finally, on Thursday, August 9, in Seattle.

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Noon Report -- Kauai - Neah Bay, Day 24

What a night! Crashing through crazy waves at close to hull speed, I got very little sleep, but had reason to believe, from what recent weather faxes and the now ancient grib told me, that the wind would weaken soon. And in the morning it did. We reached longitude 127 West where the cooperative Vessel Traffic System kicks in and I contacted Tofino Traffic on VHF channel 74. The operator told me that there was dense fog just ahead and that it was hiding a great number of small sport fishing boats, the kind that would not have AIS transmitters. He gave me a course recommendation that might help us to avoid many of them. We followed his suggested course, sailing with full main and yankee, trying to get the most out of the dying wind.

At UTC 2200, August 5, 2012, we are at 48 31.038 N, 126 18.748 W. Our day's run was 117 miles and we are 71 miles from Neah Bay.

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Noon Report -- Kauai - Neah Bay, Day 23

During the night the wind continued to build until it is now twenty to twenty-five knots from the north-northwest. We are reaching on the port tack, with storm jib and double reefed main. With ten foot waves on the beam, this is rather uncomfortable, but at least we are moving towards our destination at a quick pace.

I cannot praise the performance of my crew, Jon and Jean, enough. In the afternoon, we did a flawless sail change from yankee down to staysail and at daybreak we changed from staysail down to storm jib. Jean is the foredeck hand, Jon works at the mast and I am, quite fittingly, the afterguard. This is not easy, with the wind blowing twenty-five knots and short steep beam seas.

Yesterday was cold and gray, but today we have clear, sunny skies. We haven't had a day like this for awhile, and it is very welcome. On his early watch, Jon was visited by dolphins.

At UTC 2200, August 4, 2012, we are at 48 24.646 N, 129 14.179 W. Our day's run was 129 miles and we are now 188 miles from Neah Bay.

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Noon Report -- Kauai - Neah Bay, Day 22

We are moving fast now, averaging better than six knots, on port tack and a beam reach, with light (reaching) yankee and single-reefed main. If these are the winds that were predicted, we should enter the Strait of Juan de Fuca in two or three days. We started out the day sailing rather slowly, but during the night the pace picked up and by morning we were seeing the speeds we are enjoying now.

At UTC 2200, August 3, 2012, we are at 48 06.798 N, 132 27.180 W. Our day's run was 109 miles and we are now 317 miles from Neah Bay.

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Noon Report -- Kauai - Neah Bay, Day 21

This was a very slow day in terms of wind. So slow, that we motored for more than twelve of the twenty-four hours. I decided to do this because we had only used about a third of our supply of diesel fuel and could afford to use another eight or ten gallons to move us along. This morning we went back to sailing, port tack on a beam reach with full main and yankee, but we are averaging less than four knots with continuing light wind. We have not made radio contact since July 27, hence the grib I am using is old, but it shows good wind tomorrow and for several days to follow, enough to move us briskly into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

In the early morning, some dolphins put on a show for us. In familiar dolphin fashion, they cavorted in our bow-wave. These were quite large animals.

At UTC 2200, August 2, 2012, we are at 47 47,129 N, 135 05.600 W. Our day's run was 104 miles and we are now 426 miles from Neah Bay.

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Noon Report -- Kauai - Neah Bay, Day 20

Our strong steady wind on the beam disappeared and was replaced by a weak wind from astern. The last grib that I was able to download is from July 27, and it predicted this wind shift. We could have these light conditions for a couple of days, then the wind is supposed to pick up.

No ship traffic today. Maybe we are out of the shipping lanes for awhile. I do not miss them but I am sure they will be back as we approach Cape Flattery.

We saw more whales. This time they were a comfortable distance from the boat. They surfaced, spouted and dove. They could well have been the same type of whale that we saw a week ago.

At UTC 2200, August 1, 2012, we are at 47 32.057 N, 137 39.577 W. Our day's run was 84 miles and we are 530 miles from Neah Bay.

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Noon Report -- Kauai - Neah Bay, Day 19

Cold, grey, limited visibility, 20 knot southerly wind, beam-reaching on the starboard tack with double-reefed main and yankee, we had another record setting day's run. This morning we shortened sail, trading the staysail for the yankee. That balanced the boat better so that Rangval was able to steer more precisely.

At 2200 UTC, July 31, 2012, we are at 47 49.986 N, 139 49.158 W. Our day's run was 144 miles and we are now 614 miles from Neah Bay.

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Noon Report -- Kauai - Neah Bay, Day 18

For the past six hours we have been on a beam reach on the starboard tack, pretty much on course. During that period, we have averaged just under six knots. For the rest of the day we were moving pretty fast as well, but were headed quite a bit north of course. We have light yankee and double-reefed main up, and Rangval is just managing to keep us on course. If the wind gets stronger, we will have to change down to the staysail, set on the headstay.

The grib shows a weak low passing to the north of us but the barometer has been steady. I suspect that the stronger wind and its southerly direction is due to the low and its proximity to the high just to the south of us. After the low passes, the wind should veer to the west and get weaker. We are enjoying going fast right now, although it is a bit wet and cold.

At UTC 2200, July 30, 2012, we are at 47 15.505 N, 143 16.980 W. Our day's run was 128 miles, a new record for this voyage. We are now 758 miles from Neah Bay.

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Noon Report -- Kauai - Neah Bay, Day 17

Another day trying to keep the boat moving and as close to the course as possible. Mostly grey, mostly cold, although not quite as cold as yesterday.

We are seeing a lot more cargo vessels. Every day there are four or five of them of which at least a couple come within five miles. We are very grateful for the AIS, which enables these vessels to be displayed on our Garmin 4212 chartplotter. The 4212 computes and continually recomputes the point of closest approach. Yesterday when a Korean container ship was going to come within three miles of us, I attempted to call the bridge with the VHF transceiver, using a feature called digital select calling (DSC) which makes VHF marine communications a bit more certain and more like the telephone. The call was not acknowledged, which is a bit troubling.

The last two days we have been seeing almost no debris. I wonder why we saw so much for the previous few days? Could we have been traversing one of those large circular eddies (gyres) that are said to collect junk?

At UTC 2200, July 29, 2012, we are at 46 02.649 N, 146 00.657 W. Our day's run was 99 miles. We are now 886 miles from Neah Bay.

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Noon Report -- Kauai - Neah Bay, Day 16

We are on the home stretch now! Today we crossed 45 degrees north, which appears to me to be the northern extent of the high, most of the time. Now we are headed directly toward Cape Flattery. Today was also a special day in that we had the longest day's run so far in this passage and now we have less than 1000 miles to go. The weather was cold and miserable, however, with the exception of a couple of hours in the middle of the afternoon.

Early in the afternoon we sailed wing-on-wing, then the wind veered more to the north and we switched to close reaching on the port tack, single-reefed main and light yankee.

At UTC 2200, July 28, 2012, we are at 45 25.986 N, 148 12.793 W. Our day's run was 121 miles. We are 985 miles from Neah Bay.

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Noon Report -- Kauai - Neah Bay, Day 15

Small island? Tsunami debris? Dead whale? About half a mile off the port bow was something for sure, and it had attracted a large number of birds. It was low in the water and would disappear from time to time below the swell. The chart showed no island, no submerged mountain top. Dead whale became the favored theory because of the coloring. As we sailed into its lee, we knew for sure, because we could smell it. Definitely a dead whale. People talk all the time about the risk of sailing into tsunami debris but what about hitting that dead whale in the middle of the night? Even if it did not sink you, you would have to bear the odor for the rest of the voyage. Dead whales have always been with us, but I have never seen them mentioned in the press except when one washes up on someone's beach.

The three of us were enjoying a nice afternoon in the cockpit when we noticed a container ship about five miles off our port quarter. Then we heard someone calling the "sailing vessel near 44 north and 152 west" on VHF channel 16. I answered and it turned out to be a ship's officer named Curt who just wanted to chat. He recently purchased a 42' long cruising sailboat named Ocean Quest and is in the process of refitting it for extensive cruising. Curt wanted to know all about the way in which NS is equipped, and discussed what he has purchased for Ocean Quest and what he has in mind. He is retiring and will be cruising in the waters of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska where he was a tugboat captain before he moved on to cargo ships. I hope to see Curt and Ocean Quest down the road.

One of Curt's comments was music to my ears. He said that NS has a very strong radar profile and that he could see us from 18 miles away. I had always assumed that the two Davis radar reflectors mounted in the rigging 35' above the sea would provide a good radar return, but this was the first time that I had received positive verification, out here where a good radar presence really counts.

At UTC 2200, July 27, 2012, we are at 44 22.405 N, 150 37.894 W. Our Day's run was 98 miles.

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Noon Report -- Kauai - Neah Bay, Day 14

Slow day, forereaching with full main and light yankee at about four knots throughout the afternoon and night. Mostly overcast and misty. We have definitely left the sunny tropics behind. By daybreak the wind had gone entirely. We tried to find a breeze for a couple of hours, then turned on the engine, since we needed to charge the batteries and make fresh water. After two hours, we saw wavelets forming and turned the engine off. We were able to find a breeze that gave us a knot at first. Amazingly, Rangval was able to follow it. After a couple of more hours, we are up to four knots. Hope it holds.

At UTC 2200, July 26, 2012, we are at 43 55.776 N, 152 48.436 W. Our day's run was 85 miles.

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Noon Report -- Kauai - Neah Bay, Day 13

Whales! Lots of them! Too close for comfort!

At dusk we suddenly found ourselves in the midst of a large pod of whales. For at least a quarter of an hour they surfaced and dived as near 100' from Norwegian Steam, often in pairs and in once instance five together. Never in Mexico did I see so many whales anywhere near as close to the boat. Jean, Jon and I stood on deck in awe and wonder. In my case, at least, there was a good admixture of dread. What if one of these leviathans damaged the boat? No repair facilities nearby. Every whale was larger than NS. You could hear them breathing, smell them. Unforgettable!

The next morning we saw two more. This time they were a comfortable quarter of a mile away. These were definitely the same breed. I think they were humpbacks but Jean is not so sure.

We noticed this morning that the sea water is quite a bit colder. We are going to need to dig out warmer clothing.

We ran all night wing-on-wing on the starboard jibe, full main with light yankee poled out. During the night, as expected, the wind continued to veer to the west and then to north of west. In the morning we deployed the port spinnaker pole and jibed around onto port.

At UTC 2200, July 25, 2012, we are at 43 36.993 N, 154 44.489 W. Our Day's run was 98 miles.

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Noon Report -- Kauai - Neah Bay, Day 12

The wind kept getting lighter and lighter during the night. At the same time, it was veering to the south, enabling us to run with wind astern without heading west. At six in the morning, at the end of my watch and the beginning of Jon's, the two of us raised the main, erected the starboard spinnaker pole, replaced the storm jib with the staysail, jibed the staysail around and poled it out. Still not enough sail area. We shook the reefs out of the main, then had breakfast. When Jean got up, we replaced the staysail with the light yankee and are currently running with full main and poled out yankee. With all the sail area that we can muster wing-on-wing, we are averaging about five knots.

We are now at about the half-way point, in terms of distance. We have reached the latitude of Cape Mendocino, that infamous point on the California coast which sees gale force winds whenever the high gets very close.

At UTC 2200, July 24, 2012, we are at 42 26.201 N, 156 16.035 W. Our day's run was 100 miles.

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Noon Report -- Kauai - Neah Bay, Day 11

For the last two days, I have been unsuccessful in making any connection to Sailmail. Those of you familiar with High Frequency radio, the technology used by Sailmail, know that in the frequency range assigned (2 MHz -- 30MHz) successful communication at any given moment is almost entirely dependent on the reflectivity of the ionosphere, which changes constantly. I hope that the problem is just the ionosphere and not something gone wrong with the transceiver, the antenna tuner, antenna conections, etc. You may read this post as early as this evening or you may not be able to read it until after we get to Neah Bay and get a WIFI connection. I wish I knew. In any case, I will continued to write these daily reports, queue them up for transmission, and hope for the best.

Pete Libbey brought stuff to bake bread along on the Mexico-to-Hawaii voyage, but never got the opportunity to bake anything given that being on watch 50% of the time left little time for much else. Pete generously left his bread kit behind. Two days ago when we were nearly becalmed and again today when we are not, Jean has used Pete's sour dough bread mix to bake bread in the pressure cooker. Delicious. Thanks Jean! Thanks Pete!

I had been hoping for wind to carry us north through the space temporarily vacated by the high, and today we got it. The wind had been building all day, but by 10 at night it had gotten to be too much for the yankee, which was the only sail we had up. I called the crew on deck and we brought the yankee down, alright, but when we tried to hoist the staysail in its place, we found that the sheets had gotten very fouled up. It was too dark to straighten this out, so we sailed the rest of the night under bare poles, averaging 3 and half knots. Rangval could not keep the boat going straight, so Jon and Jean spent the rest of the night in the cockpit, each steering for an hour and a time and trying to sleep in the cockpit when not steering. At first light, we raised the storm jib and have been sailing that way ever since.

At UTC 2200, July 23, 2012, we are at 40 49.929 N, 156 51.165 W. Our day's run was 94 miles.

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Noon Report -- Kauai - Neah Bay, Day 10

The wind died again in the early afternoon. Another three hours of having to endure the rumbling of the engine to be followed by three of the most idyllic hours of sailing on a sunny and gentle ocean. In the night the wind grew stronger and in the morning we reefed down twice. We have been sailing since just after dawn at better than 6 and half knots, reaching with light yankee and double reefed main. This wind is welcome. We need it in order to get up to latitude 45 while the window through the high remains open.

At UTC 2200, July 22, 2012, we are at 39 32.479 N, 157 59.422 W. Our day's run was 117 miles.

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Noon Report -- Kauai - Neah Bay, Day 9

I am enjoying standing watch and am thinking now that it was a mistake to have fully delegated that responsibility to Pete and Gay on the Mexico-to-Hawaii voyage. I take the two-to-six watch, morning and afternoon. This morning was magic! We had reached the high and the sea was nearly flat calm. Starlit night with no moon. Close reaching with light yankee and full main, averaging four knots. A Korean freighter crosses our path about three miles ahead. Once it has passed, I can relax. I watch it steam under the big dipper, which is just above the water and, during the next half hour, exit, stage left. What is that to starboard? Another freighter? No, it is Venus rising. By four, the sky is starting to get light, but all the stars still shine ever so brightly. By five it is light. At five thirty the sun rises. Now I remember why I looked forward to the dawn watch as a young Vic-Maui racer.

Just after dinner we were suddenly becalmed, after enjoying steady, though diminishing, winds for eight days. Then we knew that we had arrived at the high. After some time, a breeze sufficient to give us steerage-way appeared and Jon hand steered for about a half an hour while it built to be strong enough for Rangval to take over. About ten, becalmed again. I was ready to start the engine, but then the wind came back, giving us the beautiful sailing conditions described above. This morning we were becalmed once more and we motored about four hours. Touch and go. We are still looking for the wind that was predicted.

Since leaving Kauai, we had hardly seen any debris, just one or two small plastic items a day, typically small storage containers or net floats. Now we are seeing junk all the time. It is still isolated items, similar to what we saw before, just much more plentiful. The largest items we saw today were something that resembled a beer keg and something else that looked like a small plastic dinghy.

We have reached the latitude of San Francisco.

At UTC 2200, July 21, 2012, we are at 38 05.662 N, 159 40.691 W. Our day's run was 72 miles.

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Noon Report -- Kauai - Neah Bay, Day 8

We were enjoying a beautiful, sunny afternoon, yesterday. Jon pointed to a small school of flying fish to port, skimming along about five feet from NS, headed in the direction of her bow. Suddenly, a mahi-mahi (dorado) leaped after them. He was about a foot out of the water and parallel to its surface. We saw him in profile and could easily see his distinctive high forehead. He was a brilliant, iridescent blue in color and about 18 inches long. Beautiful fish!

We are continually removing flying fish from the deck and this morning Jean found a squid about eight inches long. This brings to mind the technique used by fishermen on Kauai to troll for tuna. It is quite different from what the sport fishermen do in Mexico, where they have fairly typical outriggers, one on either side of the boat, angled upward at about 45 degrees, serving to spread a number of individual lines. In Port Allen, the boats have a single, flexible, pole, vertical at the center of the boat. It is much stouter than the outriggers on the sport fishermen in Mexico, and unlike them, needs no spreaders or shrouds. And, unlike them, it is tapered and meant to bend. It is, in fact, a huge whip. From this whip they haul a wide bar, the width of the transom and which is, if I recall, known as a sled. It trails behind the boat, on the surface, parallel to the transom. Though the sled serves to spread a number of individual lines, what sets it apart from other line spreaders is that it is weighted so that in conjunction with the whip it continually jumps out of the water. It puts a huge drag on the pole, which bends all the way back so that its tip is above the stern before it whips back, lifting the sled and all the lures out of the water. The artificial squid lures, by leaping as the do, are acting just like the squid that ended up on our deck this morning. Fishermen say that a tuna gets so excited when a squid jumps out of the water to elude it, that it will hit the lure in a vertical leap that takes it far above the surface.

This fishing technique brings to mind the first fish we caught on NS, a skipjack tuna, while en route from Baja to Mazatlan. The lure would hop out of the water continually. I have since discussed the advisability of adding a bit of weight with a number of fishermen. Those from the Northwest seem to favor this idea, perhaps because most fishing up there is done deep. Now from observing this squid on deck and talking to fishermen in Port Allen I understand that we probably would have missed that skipjack had we used weight.

Currently, I am running the watermaker and the engine. I do this once every three days. With three of us on board, we are using about a five gallon of fresh water a day, so I make 15 gallons of water and charge the batteries for two hours. Jean is on watch, and in her spare time is cleaning the deck. Jon is off watch and is trying to sleep while this is going on.

For the past 22 hours we have been sailing close hauled on the starboard tack, with full main and the staysail set on the headstay. With these sails and this point of sail, NS balances perfectly, and it is a joy to watch Rangval steer her effortlessly.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we are expecting the high, which has recently been north of us, to move east. When that happens, the NE wind should veer progressively to the east and then to the south. That way, we should be lifted and our direction should start changing more easterly, as Rangal follows the apparent wind. But it appears that the high is still north of us and, in fact, we have been headed a bit, so we are currently farther to the west than we have ever been in spite of being close hauled. I will breathe a sigh of relief when I see the wind begin to veer.

A freighter headed for San Francisco crossed our path perpendicularly yesterday afternoon, passing about 30 miles to the south. That is the first sign of human activity we have seen in days.

At UTC 2200, July 20, 2012, we are at 36 56.990 N, 160 11.463 W. Our day's run was 98 miles.

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Noon Report -- Kauai - Neah Bay, Day 7

We have been under sail for one week now! We hope to reach our landfall in another two weeks or a little more. It looks like the weather is shaping up for us to get around the high. In fact, the high is predicted to step aside in a couple of days to let us pass!

How do I get that kind of information way out here on the ocean? Every day, I download data files generated by NOAA's Global Forecasting System (GFS) as an attachment to a Sailmail email. These are great, and they are free. This type of file is called a grib (gridded information base) because it consists of tuples of data for each point in a grid. I specify the grid by giving the latitudes and longitudes of its four boundary corners and how close within this region the points should be. I also specify which data items should be included in the tuples and the frequency of predictions. I ask for wind speed, wind direction and barometric pressure for ten days. A website called Saildocs.com, which is related to Sailmail, allows me to set up my grib request as a subscription. Each day, Saildocs downloads my grib from NOAA, attaches it to an email addressed to me, and sends it to my Sailmail account. The next time I am able to connect to Sailmail, it is automatically downloaded. Because due to the vagaries of HF radio propagation I am only succeeding in connecting to Sailmail in the evening, that is when my grib arrives.

(Incidentally, gentle reader, even if you are not a sailor you can use Saildocs. Information on their website explains everything you need to know to get your own gribs or many other interesting reports, on either a one-time or subscription basis.)

Once I have my daily grib, I open it on my laptop with a program called zygrib, which is an example of a "grib viewer." Zygrib displays the data as geographical images that very much resemble weather maps, one for each prediction time or, in our case, one for each day. I can easily move backwards and forwards through the predictions for the next several days. The only thing that zygrib images lack that the surface predictions drawn by the weather specialists at the National Weather Service possess is any indication of warm and cold fronts. Highs and lows are handled quite well. Since I am now concerned primarily with the location of the Eastern Pacific High, fronts are irrelevant. Once we get up to the zone of the westerlies, low pressure systems will become more interesting and then I will try to use the fax capability of my radio system to get surface forecasts as traditional radio-fax images.

At UTC 2200, July 19, 2012, we are at 35 19.471 N, 160 00.034 W. Our day's run was 115 miles.

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Noon Report -- Kauai - Neah Bay, Day 6

We passed the latitude of San Diego in the night and will pass that of LA in a few hours. We have entered the zone of the northern subtropical divergence, or "horse latitudes", so called because horses would die of thirst when ships carrying them became becalmed in this region. The high pressure area is currently to the northeast of us and we still have wind. Not quite as much as we had a few days ago, but adequate to move us along. Our goal is to reach the westerlies which flow north of the high. At present, based on weather data (GFS gribs) that I download daily with my radio equipment via Sailmail, we will have to go to 42 degrees to get north of the high. At our current rate, that will take four or five days. If conditions look right, we may start angling to the east a bit before that.

Jean and Jon cooked a Spanish omelette last night, with eggs, potatoes, tomatoes, onions, peppers and olives. We are eating well!

At UTC 2200, July 18, 2012, we are at 33 23.861 N, 159 58.234 W. Our day's run was 110 miles.

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Noon Report -- Kauai - Neah Bay, Day 5

Some good news. Four problems which were plaguing me seem to have been resolved.

1. With the help of my very resourceful Kauai cousin, Bob Farlander, I was able to discover that the engine cooling problem, originally thought to be due to a leaky heat exchanger, was actually caused by a leak within a double pump, in which a salt-water pump and a fresh-water pump share a single shaft. Fresh water was leaking through the shaft seal into the salt water and out of the engine. Fortunately I carry a complete replacement for this pump. After I installed the new pump, I verified that there was no more leaking. The day we left, I ran the engine for hours and it stayed cooler than it has for a year. Very good news.

2. Also while visiting cousin Bill Farlander in Kauai, I made a change to the wiring of my Balmar MC 614 Alternator regulater. I saw the results today. In two hours of engine running, our 600 ampere hour bank of AGM batteries rose from 55% charge to 80% charge. When I turned the engine off, the regulator was still charging in bulk mode. I have never experienced nearly so good charging performance before.

3. By the end of the Mexico to Hawaii passage, my laptop #1 was acting erratically. This laptop is crucial for Sailmail, which provides us with email and weather files via HF radio. I wasn't worried, because I carried laptop #2, a complete spare, loaded with the necessary software, and tested with the radio gear. In Kauai, I decided to transfer some files from laptop #1 to laptop #2, to bring it up-to-date. That was a big mistake and I should have known better! After the file transfer, the Oracle VirtualBox software which enables me to run Windows on my Linux laptops refused to start Windows.

What to do? I could have reinstalled Windows XP on Laptop #2, but I had not brought my copy of Windows XP on the boat. Maybe I could buy a copy of Windows on Kauai? Windows 7 "upgrade" was the only version available, but to install it an older copy of Windows (such as XP) is required. In the end, I bought a Windows 7 Acer Netbook at Walmart for $268, only slightly more that the $200 I would have paid for the "upgrade" if I had decided that it was usable.

I got all the software working and I thought I had a solution. Everything worked in Port Allen, but after we left, the USB ports refused to connect to the pactor modem, part of the radio system. I went back to using Laptop #1, but this morning it gave out completely. I then struggled with Windows 7 and the netbook and finally found that the system would work if I restarted the netbook frequently. Windows!!

4. The final problem solved was the small bilge pump running too much of the time. That is still working fine, with the pump on only a small part of the time.

At UTC 2200, July 17, 2012, we are at 31 33.459 N, 159 48.619 W. Our day's run was 115 miles.

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Noon Report -- Kauai - Neah Bay, Day 4

I got very little sleep last night. The small (800 gph) bilge pump ran almost continuously and I kept mulling over worst case scenarios in my mind. This is an issue I wrote about before. During the Mexico to Hawaii passage,I was afraid that NS was being sunk by water coming in around the anchor in her bow. At that time, I stuffed foam and rags around the place where the anchor chain entered the boat and had convinced myself that this helped, at least a little bit.

Eventually, my troubled mind came up with some positive steps. I opened the floor panel that gives access to the deepest part of the bilge, turned off the pump and observed. Water accumulated over a 10 minute period, but not a lot. I then turned the pump back on and continued to observe. The pump took an inordinate amount of time emptying the bilge, starting and stopping repeatedly. I then realized that I had been on the wrong tack. The amount of water was not the problem. The inefficiency of the pump setup was.

The small pump is supposed to get the bilge as dry as possible. It is a submersible pump and is installed at the very lowest point. It is controlled by a submersible electronic switch with two water sensors, one above the other. When water is detected by the upper sensor, the pump turns on. When water is no longer detected by the lower sensor, it turns off. There is some additional sophistication that involves timeouts or delays. I had installed the switch just a little above the intake to the pump and this worked very well in a marina, keeping the bilge as dry as possible. I realized that was not working very well in a boat at sea. This morning I reinstalled the switch about five inches above the pump intake. That seems to have solved the problem. Now the pump is running only a small percentage of the time.

We are still sailing north under double-reefed main and the staysail hoisted on the headstay. This seems to be working very well, even when the wind gets light for short periods of time or stronger during rain squalls.

At UTC 2200, July 16, 2012, we are at 29 37.920 N, 159 39.977 W. Our day's run was 120 miles.

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Noon Report -- Kauai - Neah Bay, Day 3

We are still clipping along in the northerly direction, gaining two degrees of latitude each day. The rig is almost perfectly balanced under double reefed main and the staysail set on the headstay and, consequently, Rangval is doing an excellent job of steering. still sailing a bit to windward of a beam reach.

We suffered a bit of a non-sailing setback when Jean discovered weevils in the Mexican organic brown rice and also found that three of our four bags of outmeal now have water in them. We put the rice in the freezer to kill the weevils and discarded the wet outmeal. This is not very serious, since we carry a lot of food.

At UTC 2200, July 15, 2012, we are at 27 37.624 N, 159 35.256 W. Our day's run was 120 miles/

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Noon Report -- Kauai -- Neah Bay, Day 2

The wind has veered a bit, so we sailed the entire day on a close reach. We are really all alone out here. We have not seen any other vessels, nor wildlife other than a few birds. Jean cooked a tasty single-pot pressure cooker meal, with rice, carrots, egg plant, onions, tomatoes, green beans, garlic and spices. The egg plant and green beans were compliments of Clayton, the Japanese-American Kauai native and taro farmer who has been a friend of my Kauai cousins, Bill and Bob Farlander, for 40 years. Thank you Clayton. We have also enjoyed some of your papaya.

Our radio setup has been showing some unreliability. In the future, dear readers, if I am unable to make a blog post on a given day, or even if the posts cease entirely, please do not conclude that some disaster has befallen us.

At 2200 UTC, July 14, 2012, we are at 25 37.089 N, 159 29.388 W. Our day's run was 119 miles.

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Noon Report -- Kauai-Neah Bay Day 1

By mid-afternoon we got NS moving well, close-hauled against the trade winds. With a double-reefed main and the staysail set as a small jib on the head stay, we were clipping along at 6 knots with Rangval (the name we give our Monitor wind vane self steering) at the helm. We had noticed a naval ship moving along about a mile to the west, going very slowly. We also saw a large helicopter transporting what looked like either a torpedo or a rocket. Then a boat described in the AIS message as an 85 foot long torpedo retriever approached us on our port quarter. We established VHF radio communications on channel 16 and were advised to talk to missile range control on channel 06. This we did, and having told them that we were on a course due north to the latitude of San Francisco were advised to jog to the left five miles and then continue our course in order to avoid "exercises" scheduled for the next morning. We tacked and actually went seven miles out of our way to be on the safe side, but it was the least we could do for the defense of our country. This, by the way, is where they test the "star wars" missile defense system.

Once back on course, we continue to head north under reefed main and jib at six knots. Everyone is fine.

At 2200 UTC, July 13, 2012, we are at 23 36.711 N, 159 33.457 W. Our day's run was 93 miles, partly under power.

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Noon Report -- Kauai-Neah Bay, Day 0

It was not as early as our midnight departure from Mexico, but we left Port Allen, Kauai at 5:25 AM, in order to avoid the strong wind onto the dock which comes up during the day.

My crew this time consists of my son Jon and a young woman named Jean who has offshore experience.

I decided to pass along the western side of Kauai, it being the lee side of the island, because the wind would be gentler, giving a bit of time before we would have to face 20 knot trade winds. The wind turned out to be too gentle, however, and we had to do some motor sailing.

At 2200 UTC, July 12, 2012, we are at 22 04.636 N, 159 52.582 W.

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Kauai

After four days at the very hospitable Hawaii Yacht Club in Honolulu, NS moved on to Kauai, where she moored in Port Allen, near the town of Hanapepe. On board for the passage to Kauai were Sally, Alan, Jennifer and Amy Westhagen, and Paul Wright. The passage across the Kauai Channel was rough but not extraordinarily so.

Cabo-Hawaii Arrival

We entered the Ala Wai Small Boat Harbor at Honolulu at 10:05 Hawaiian time (2005 UTC), June 23, 2012.  We proceeded to the fuel dock and then to the Hawaii Yacht Club. We will be staying at HYC four days, before leaving for Kauai. The people at HYC have been extremely  helpful and kind to us. We are, of course, thrilled to be back on terra firma and looking forward to our stay.

Noon Report -- Cabo Hawaii Day 20

A couple of very large porpoises welcomed us to Hawaii an hour ago. For awhile they amused themselves simply by diving under the bow wave, but then one flipped totally out of the water over the starboard bow wave, completing its arc at deck level. The other porpoise repeated this friendly gesture on the port side.

10 miles to go! We are off Oahu and can see Diamond Head in the distance.

Our day's run was 151 miles.

We caught another mahi-mahi yesterday about noon. The lure had been in the water about four hours. The fish weighed about fifteen pounds.

This voyage has been marked by good luck. Good luck in obtaining the paper work to leave Mexico just a few hours after the crew arrived. Good luck in terms of wind. Good luck in terms of fishing, with two tuna caught, one caught and released and two mahi-mahi. Only once did we have to bring in the lure before we had a strike. Good luck in that no one was injured and NS and her equipment suffered no major damage or break-down.

At 1800 UTC, June 22, 2012, we are at 21 13.301 N, 157 39.980 W, with 10 miles to go.

Noon Report -- Cabo-Hawaii Day 19

Catch and release! Pete and Gay caught a 20 pound blue fin tuna but released it, because they were hoping for another mahi-mahi and we already have fish in the freezer.

132 miles for the days run, mostly under poled-out yankee and full main. The wind was good and our distance over the ground was certainly greater that the 132 miles made good, but we find that the boat runs more quickly and smoothly if we tack downwind, even with this wing-on-wing configuration.

At 1800 UTC, June 22, 2012, we are at 21 59.718 N, 155 12.315 W, with only 161 miles to go.

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Noon Report -- Cabo-Hawaii Day 18

The lure had been dancing in our wake for four hours when, just before local noon, a fish struck. It soon revealed itself to be mahi-mahi by its blue and yellow coloring and that it could be a big one by the way it fought. After having lost a smaller mahi-mahi yesterday by being too aggressive in reeling it in, Pete played this one with admirable patience. Gay gaffed the fish perfectly, Pete dispatched it, and there it lay on the small cleaning table affixed to the stern pulpit. Maybe 15 pounds. About as big as we would want to handle. We ate half the meat last night and froze the other half. Great eating! The two tunas we caught earlier in the voyage were excellent but this fish was superb!

152 miles for the day's run. The winds have been lighter but we have been making good time under single-reef main and yankee.

At 1800 UTC, June 21, 2012, we are at 21 34.066 N, 152 45.799 W, 293 miles from our destination.

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Noon Report -- Cabo-Hawaii Day 17

Fourteen minutes! Given the success of NS as a fishing platform, I had started to believe that offshore trolling was really easy. But fourteen minutes? The lure had gone into the water a little after noon, local time, and fourteen minutes later, a strike. Pete and Gay had been hoping for a mahi-mahi (dorado), had changed lures, and there it was. Joy! and then heartbreak! The fish got away. Why? I am guessing that Pete was a bit too eager to reel the fish up to the boat. Unlike the two tunas previously caught, this mahi-mahi had some fight.

The day's run was 137 miles. After a brisk start, the winds weakened, especially during the night. At day break, we increased our sail area, returning to the single-reefed main, poled-out yankee configuration. Since we did that we have been exceeding six knots, on average. If we can make 140 miles per day, we will reach Honolulu mid-day on Saturday.

At 1800 UTC, June 20, 2012, we are at 21 27.317 N, 150 01.896 W, with 445 miles to go.

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Noon Report -- Cabo-Hawaii Day 16

Today was quite a bit slower than yesterday. Our day's run was 132 miles. We sailed most of the 24 hour period with full main and poled out staysail. Very comfortable, at least.

It rained a lot in the night and in the morning. Lots of wet tradewind clouds around. Gay and Pete took advantage of the fresh water falling from the sky to clean themselves up a bit without depleting the water in our tanks.

For a second time, we have adjusted the clock by which we are living. We are now on UTC minus 10 hours.

At 1800 UTC, June 19, 2012, we are at 21 28.691 N, 147 35.482 W, with 582 miles to go.

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Noon Report -- Cabo-Hawaii Day 15

Yesterday afternoon, running in very brisk tradewinds with lots of waves, we were surround by hundreds and hundreds of porpoises. They were having a great old time surfing in the waves, just as we were, on top of the waves. They stayed with us for at least 15 minutes.

Another fast day. We had shortened sail, but still set another personal day's best for Norwegian Steam at 161 miles made good. We have the staysail hoisted not on its own stay but on the headstay, with a six foot pendant at the tack and a spinnaker pole at the clew. The main is double-reefed.

At 1800 UTC, June 18, 2012, we are at 21 53.651 N, 145 13.813 W, with 714 miles to go.

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Noon Report -- Cabo-Hawaii Day 14

158 miles made good! Another personal best day's run for Norwegian Steam. We are flying, perhaps a little too fast. We have been running under double-reefed main and poled-out yankee, but are getting ready to reduce sail area by replacing yankee with staysail. The wind is blowing 20 to 25 knots.

During the night we passed the 2/3 of the way mark.

At 1800 UTC, June 17, 2012, we are at 22 31.132 N, 142 20.974 W, with 875 miles to go.

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Noon Report -- Cabo-Hawaii Day 13

Another fish! We dropped the lure into the sea just after lunch and 15 minutes later we had a fish -- a seven pound skipjack tuna. Same lure, same handline. This time it was Pete hauling in the line and Gay working the gaff. From the time the gear was deployed until the fish was in the fridge and the cockpit cleaned, less than an hour had passed. Quicker than a trip to Whole Foods!

Our day's run was 144 miles, a new personal best for Norwegian steam. We have been running in 15 to 20 knot winds, under double reefed main and poled-out yankee. A bit stronger winds are forecast for tomorrow, so we will probably replace the yankee with the staysail, which is only 70% its size.

It's sunny again today, but still a bit chilly on deck, due to the wind. Right now, the temperature inside the boat is 74 degrees.

At 1800 UTC, June 16, 2012, our location is 23 07.786 N, 139 31.360 W, 1033 miles from Honolulu.

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Noon Report -- Cabo-Hawaii Day 12

Our day's run was 143 miles. For Norwegian Steam, that is a new personal best!

Today is mostly sunny. We have the ever-present trade wind clouds, but in smaller proportion. We are running with double reefed main and poled-out yankee. The wind speed jumps around a lot, from 10 knots to 25 knots, which makes the course Rangval steers weave a bit, since he follows the apparent wind and the apparent wind swings aft on gusts and forward on lulls.

At 1800 UTC, on June 15, 2012, our location is 23 08.720 N, 136 54.595 W. We are 1177 miles from Honolulu.

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Noon Report -- Cabo-Hawaii Day 11

During the night we passed the halfway point. We are moving along briskly under reefed main and pole-out yankee. Rangval (our Monitor wind-vane self-steering) is doing an admirable job at the tiller, making life a lot easier for the person on watch.

In the middle of the night we had some excitement. I was awakened by a whole lot of clattering of sails and rigging and saw that Gay was already headed up the companionway ladder. Rangval's vane had come loose and without access to the wind's direction, the device had initiated a jibe. The boom was actually prevented from jibing by the preventer line which leads forward from the end of the boom through a block near the bow and thence back to a cockpit winch. Controlling the line with the winch, Gay let the boom jibe and then was able to steer back towards our course and jibe again. The vane was not lost overboard because I always secure it with an extra safety line. Pete reattached the vane, reset its direction and Gay turned the steering chore back to the Rangval.

This really looks like trade wind country now. On all sides we see the small puffy low-flying clouds so characteristic of this region. Once in a while, the sun shines down between clouds.

Although our day's run is the same as yesterday's, we are traveling faster. The yankee poled out to windward limits how close to the wind we can sail and this has forced us to sail below our course, diminishing the distance made good in the direction of Hawaii somewhat less.

I may have mentioned that every morning I download a weather data (grib) file as an attachment to an email that the saildocs server sends me. The file is slightly larger than the size of the maximum file that sailmail will allow, hence I use a compatible amateur radio based system called winlink instead. Once the email message has arrived and the attached grib has been saved, we examine the data as a geographical image using zygrib, an open-source grib viewer.

The gribs are showing us that as we travel westward, the wind will be more and more from the east, so we will be able to regain our northing without having to abandon the wing-on-wing sail plan which we like a lot because it is very stable and balanced.

Today the AIS receiver showed us a freighter 80 miles away. That is far beyond the normal range, because AIS is based on VHF marine radio, which is line-of-sight. The ship is a freighter. From its course, it seems to be headed for Hawaii and is projected to overtake us and pass 10 miles to starboard in approximately seven hours.

At 1800 UTC, June 14, 2012, we are located at 23 16.624 N, 134 20.084 W, 1320 miles from Honolulu. Our day's run was 129 miles.

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Noon Report -- Cabo-Hawaii Day 10

We have reached the trades! The wind has pulled around so that it is now on the starboard quarter.

During the night one of the mainsheet blocks came loose from its attachment point under the boom, so we just lowered the main and have been getting along without it ever since. We are sailing with just the yankee (a high-clewed jib with an area about the same as that of the fore-triangle). It is hard for Rangval (that's the name of our Monitor wind vane self-steering) to keep us on course because there is a lot of weather helm. I had a spare block and was able to use it to repair the mainsheet. We will try a wing-on-wing sail configuration this afternoon, with the main hoisted with a single reef and the yankee poled out to windward.

This morning I got to test the repair that I made yesterday to the charging system. The alternator worked fine and we were able to put a good charge into the battery bank. While this was happening, I ran the watermaker and our fresh water tanks are now full again.

Our day's run was 129 miles. At 1800 UTC, June 13, 2012, our location is 23 44.037 N, 132 00.698 W.

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Noon Report -- Cabo-Hawaii Day 9

We caught a tuna! Mid afternoon we rigged up the hand line and a couple of hours later Gay reeled in a small tuna on the yoyo. We ate most of it for lunch today. Delicious and much appreciated. When caught, the fish was a silvery blue and weighed about five pounds. I think that is just right. I don't know how we would handle anything a lot bigger. Incidentally, Gay used a green and orange artificial squid bait.

Our day's run was 131 miles and we are 1578 miles from Honolulu. The wind is in the ten to fifteen knot range and is about 20 degrees abaft the beam.

I had been worrying the last two days about our ability to recharge the batteries which supply us with electricity to make water, run the refrigerator/freezer, the HF radio email system, the Garmin 4212 chart plotter and our navigation lights. Keeping them charged is absolutely critical. I ran the engine two days ago and brought the charge from about 53% capacity up to close to 80%. I intended to let it run a little bit longer, but then Pete accidentally sped the engine up by bumping the throttle handle with his shin. I turned it back down almost immediately, but noticed that the display on the alternator regulator had gone crazy. I stopped the engine, restarted it and saw that now the regulator was not even turning on, it's display dark. Why? Sudden spike in voltage due to increased speed? Just another regulator gone bad at random? No answers but a lot to worry about.

This morning the battery bank was down to 60% capacity and I needed to make a decision. Either I could fix the problem, or we would have to cut back radically on our already frugal use of electricity. I got out all my electrical tools, ready to trace the whole charging system. I opened the engine compartment, stared at the alternator and saw immediately that a wire had broken. Stroke of luck! I swaged a terminal to the wire, reconnected it, and now the regulator lit up. I will run the engine tomorrow, because that is when I project that the batteries will be at 50% capacity.

At 1800 UTC, June 12, 2012, our location is 23 42.252 N, 129 38.778 W.

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Noon Report -- Cabo-Hawaii Day 8

Today was very much like yesterday, except that the wind was a bit weaker. Our day's run was 122 miles. Near the end of the morning the sun peaked out through the clouds. We hope that is the start of a trend, because it has been completely overcast these past few days.

We have not seen a boat or ship of any kind for at least three days. Naively, we had been thinking that as we approached Hawaii we would be crossing shipping lanes between the far east and the Panama canal. We were wondering exactly where we might encounter this traffic so that we could be especially vigilant. This morning I used a software package called "Visual Passage Planner" to design a route from Japan to Panama and saw immediately that the great circle routes from the far east go way north, very close to the Aleutian islands, and then run down along the west coast of Canada, the USA, and Mexico. We passed the locations where these routes would cross our path many days ago, so that explains, in part, why we see no boats where we are now.

We saw large porpoises yesterday evening. The way they were jumping around it seemed they were feeding. There must be fish here. This afternoon we are going to rig our fishing gear and try to catch a tuna or a mahi-mahi.

At 1800 UTC, June 11, 2012, we are at 23 33.577 N, 127 16.071 W

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Noon Report -- Cabo-Hawaii Day 7

We have been at this a week. In less than six hours we will be a third of the way to Honolulu. Our day's run was 135 miles, the best yet! We have 1831 miles to go.

The apparent wind is now abaft the beam. Even though the winds are weaker, we are able to keep up our speed because of the favorable angle.

Now for a change of pace. Many of you out there in the great NS Blog reading public are probably wondering, "What does Alan do all day long? After all, he has three other people to help sail the boat and he doesn't even stand watch. When will he succumb to boredom?" I want you all to know that I very much appreciate your concern and for that reason I have decided to describe my morning.

I arose a few minutes before 7am, at watch-change time. Gay had just completed the "dog" watch and was being replaced on deck by Pete, whose turn it was to do the "morning" watch. Amy was still asleep.

During the night, the charge in the battery bank had fallen to 53% of capacity. 50% is the lowest you can take deep-discharge batteries such as those found on NS and most other cruising boats, without damaging them. The solar panels alone would not suffice to raise the charge level so that it would remain at safe levels for more than a few hours.

I would need to run the engine so that its alternator output could be added to the output of the panels. But first, I filled a half-gallon bottle with water and poured it into the engine's cooling system, which has been losing water. As long as I pour in this water every time I run it, the engine does not seem to over-heat. After checking that there was also sufficient diesel oil in the fuel tank, I started the engine and then checked the electronic charge monitoring system to ascertain that the battery was indeed being charged at a goodly rate.

In the night, Pete had noticed that one of the control lines for the Monitor self-steering was chafing where it ran through a block on the Monitor itself. In daylight, it was clear that something would have to be done. I took some wrenches from my tool bag, donned my harness, tethered myself to a strong point and leaned out over the stern of the boat so that I could reach the block. After several tries, I repositioned the block so that now the line leads fair.

Since I was on deck, Gay asked me to help him shake a reef out of the mainsail. That only took a couple of minutes.

After that, I got our Spectra 150 MPC watermaker going. When the 150 MPC starts up, it automatically tests the salinity of the water it is producing and starts flowing it to the tanks when the salinity is at an acceptable level. I don't trust this, because if the automatic test malfunctions, bad water will be added to the good water already in the tank, possibly making the entire tank undrinkable. Instead, I diverted the product water to a small tap at the sink and tested its salinity with a manual probe. After I satisfied myself that the salinity was in the safe range and that the smell and taste of the water were acceptable, I diverted the flow to a tank.

Since I had not attended to our "black water" holding tank for a week, I added a gallon of freshwater and a packet of Odorlos biological treatment powder to the toilet and flushed it all into the holding tank. That should eliminate smells for another week.

The high frequency radio communications which provide us with personal email, and with weather reports and data, works best within a couple of hours after sunrise or before sunset, due to the nature of the propagation of radio waves in the upper atmosphere. Since the end of the morning "window" was fast approaching, I first connected to the nonprofit sailmail system to send and receive personal email and a textual weather report, then to the amateur radio winlink system to download a weather data (grib) file. This only took about 20 minutes.

After that I noticed that the alternator was no longer charging at the rate that I would have expected. Initially the battery bank had been at 53%. It was now a little over 60%, but the mode of charge had changed from bulk (fast) to float (very slow). Why, when there was still so much to do? I found the manual for our Balmar Max Charge MIC-614 alternator regulator, which told me that the length of time that the regulator is willing to drive the alternator in bulk mode is determined by a factor called "field threshhold-bulk to absorption" (fba) which is given a default value at the factory but can be changed by the owner in a process called "advanced programming". The manual does not explain what this fba means or why it is even necessary (the MIC-614 is a "smart" regulator, after all). I "programmed" the MIC-614 to reduce fba, stopped and restarted the engine, and the system was back to charging in bulk mode.

Amy had been up for a while, so I asked her and Gay if they would like some scrambled eggs. They were in favor of this idea, so I cooked up onions and medium-hot green peppers with eggs. The aroma awakened Pete, so we were all able to eat breakfast at the same time at NS's gimballed saloon table.

While eating, it occurred to me that there might be some grated cheddar in the fridge. I went to our top-opening freezer/fridge, opened the fridge door and searched the interior. Finding nothing, I was just withdrawing my head from the area when the door swung down, giving me a small cut in the forehead and the beginnings of a "goose egg". Why was I so careless? No excuse, but we had been heeled over 15 to 20 degrees on the starboard tack for a week, and it had not been necessary to be as diligent as usual in securing that fridge door with shock cord. Now that the wind is abaft the beam we are heeling much less. I hope I have learned a lesson from this.

Anyway, I got a paper towel for the blood and an ice pack for the goose egg and rested on the settee while Amy washed the dishes. The wound was not serious at all. I did not need a band-aid and the ice made the swelling disappear.

Before noon, I needed to start and stop the engine two more times in order to reset the Balmar MIC-614. Something is not right there!

At 1800 UTC, June 10, 2012, we are at 23 24.633 N, 125 03.327 W

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Noon Report -- Cabo-Hawaii Day 6

Last night we passed the quarter-way marker. Our day's run was 131 miles. We are now 1966 miles from Honolulu.

We are all alone out here, at least as far as we can tell. We have seen no other vessels in the past 24 hours, either by AIS or with the naked eye. When you consider that the AIS is working to 20 or 30 miles out here, the isolation is rather awesome.

The last few days have been overcast much of the time. The solar panels, consequently, have not been producing as much electricity as I had hoped. I have now had to run the engine twice to charge the battery banks and it appears I will have to continue to do this every other day. Fortunately, we have plenty of diesel fuel for this and while charging batteries but not propelling the vessel at the same time, the engine runs cool.

I bought a lot of very delicious tomatoes in Cabo San Jose. They are, unfortunately, all gone now, mostly spoiled. I wish there had been a convenient source of green tomatoes. I have also lost a couple of carrots and a couple of grapefruit, but the apples, cabbages and oranges are doing well. We will not starve, however, even if all the fresh produce goes bad because we have lots of dried and canned goods.

At 1800 UTC on June 9, 2012, our location is 23 05.908 N, 122 38.282 W

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Noon Report -- Cabo-reHawaii Day 5

We crossed the 120th Meridian this morning and finally the wind is coming from east of north. Little by little we move into the trades. Our day's run was 130 miles, the best yet.

The morning was overcast, but now there are a few hints of blue. Maybe there will be some clearing this afternoon. We are traveling across a true oceanscape, with the wavetops of the swell being separated by several hundred feet. With the true wind on the beam, it is rare now that we hit a wave so hard that it causes the boat to shudder.

It had seemed to me that our consumption of electricity was a bit more than expected. Gazing at the electrical switch panel last night, I noticed that the small bilge pump was going on and off quite regularly. Then I remembered the bow anchor which is installed in a roller right through the stem of the boat, inside a baffled ventilation box. If water enters around the roller, most of it is trapped in the ventilation box and flows out a drain hole at the bottom. When water is entering with a lot of force, as it would if the bow were plowing into a wave, some water might flow over the opening at the top of the back of the box, where the chain exits over a second roller. I crawled over sails, duffel bags and provisions to get right up into the bow of the boat, opened an access door, peered right at the back of the box and observed that about a pint of water was pouring down every 15 seconds or so. I then cut a piece of foam and was able to force that up into the space under the roller. That cut the flow more or less in half. The boat is in no danger from this. The small automatic bilge pump is capable of 800 gallons per hour. A foot above it in the keel is the large automatic pump which can handle 2200 gallons per hour. That pump is 2.5 feet below the cabin sole and if it were to start up, a siren would sound. We are a long way from that happening. If the large pump ran, it would probably mean that the small pump had worn out. We carry a complete replacement on board. In a few more days we will be running and the bow will not be nearly so wet. If the problem does not go away, I will go to the bow and stuff foam all around the anchor opening. In Hawaii, I will make some sort of a plug so that we are ready for the Sitka leg.

Our current location, at 1800 UTC, June 8, 2012 is 22 36.223 N, 120 17.902 W

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Noon Report -- Cabo-Hawaii Day 4

1800 UTC, June 7, 2012. Our day's run was 126 miles. After the first 10 hours, we were on track for a 150 mile day, but then the wind weakened. Earlier in the evening, the wind had increased into the 20 to 25 knot range and the boat was overpowered, so we took a second reef in the main and dropped the staysail. She was still going fast. Unfortunately, that did not last all night. We are still sailing with yankee and double-reefed main, but now we definitely need to make a change. The wind has dropped to an average of 15 knots and has veered to the north, so that we are finally on a beam reach. As we travel west, the weather charts tell us that we we will encounter winds that are progressively more and more from the east, until we are broad-reaching in the northeast trade winds. That might take three or more days.

In between trimming sails, keeping a lookout for dangers and steering (or tweeking the Monitor wind vane self steering), eating is one of the more important things we do. Not having been affected by queasiness on this voyage, one of my jobs is to get people to eat. When I woke up this morning, Pete was on watch in the cockpit, while Amy and Gay were asleep on the settees, port and starboard. Pete did not feel like breakfast yet, so I got him a granola bar and some orange juice. Following Pete's lead, I ate the same. When Amy woke up, after drinking lime gatorade she agreed that she could eat some orange slices, so we all enjoyed a couple of the very delicious oranges I bought in San Jose. I then decided that I personally needed more to eat, so I made a batch of oat meal, for myself of course, but twice as much as I would eat in the hope that I could induce others to partake. It worked. We all had oatmeal with apples and raisins. Later, when Gay woke up, he ate a bowl of granola. A little later, I made sandwiches for Amy, Pete and myself, but Gay declined, saying he had just had granola. But then, when he saw the rest of us eating our sandwiches, he asked me to make one for him too. Very simple fare, but its the only restaurant in these parts.

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Noon Report -- Cabo-Hawaii Day 3

We are now 2353 miles from our destination, having sailed 108 miles in the past 24 hours. As predicted, tne wind has veered enough to let us ease the sheets a bit. With 15 knot winds, we are now averaging about six knots and are not pounding into the waves as often. Lighter winds, in the ten knot range, are predicted for tomorrow. If that happens, we will still be able to make good time, if the wind continues to veer.

The AIS receiver is a godsend. The range out here is at least 30 miles and every day we see half a dozen ships. None has come closer than four miles, but knowing what their speed and direction is has provided peace of mind. Night before last we did encounter a sizable fishing vessel that was not transmitting AIS. It was brilliantly lit up and we could see it from many miles off, but its running lights, if it had them lit, were simply overpowered by all the other lights, so that we were unable to determine what direction it was going. We measured its bearing with a hand compass many times and came to the conclusion that we were on a collision course. We then altered our course 30 degrees to leeward and only then did the bearing change. We concluded that the vessel was either moving slowly or not at all.

Today is beautiful and sunny. We are cracking along on the starboard tack, over brilliant blue seas, heeled 15 degrees with the leeward rail occasionally awash, making six knots.

Our current location, at 1800 UTC, is 21 58.808 N, 115 45.327 W

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Noon Report -- Cabo-Hawaii Day 2

With 2461 miles to go, our day's run was 108 miles, with 106 of those miles "made good" (in the direction we wanted to go). We are still sailing close hauled in 15 to 20 knot breezes. The wind has shifted more to the north, but we are still sailing about 13 degrees south of the desired heading. We are hoping the wind will continued to veer as, in fact, the weather forecast indicates that it should.

The high point of this 24 hours was a visit by a blue footed boobie, a sea bird with long elegant wings but with a rather comical face. Our boobie landed on our solar panels and rode for a few minutes. I did not want the bird to stay very long, however, as boobies are notorious for fouling the decks and appendages of boats with their excrement and boobie poop all over the solar panels would definitely hinder their performance. Not wanting to have to climb up on the stern arch in a seaway to clean the panels, I asked Gay and Pete to shoo the bird away. The boobie was hard to get rid of, and it kept coming back, only to have every attempt met with waving arms and seat cushions. It even tried to land on the leech of the mainsail, but could not hold on and could not avoid bumping its wings into the backstay. Ouch!

Our current position, at 1800 UTC on June 5, 2012, is 21 44.524 N, 113 49.457 W.

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Noon Report -- Cabo-Hawaii Day 1

Noon, Day 1. 2567 nautical miles to go. When we started, the distance to go was 2690 miles. Since the start, we have only knocked 123 miles off the total we need to achieve.

Our noon-to-noon run over the ground was 104 miles, but the distance "made good" was only 90 miles, because a west-northwest wind is forcing us to sail to the south of the great circle route. We have been sailing close hauled under main, staysail and yankee for the entire 24 hour period. Slowly the wind has veered, lifting us closer and closer to the bearing of Hawaii. According the weather information (grib file) that I downloaded this morning, the wind will continue to veer and we will soon be sailing towards our destination and may even be able to ease the sheets a bit. We are not complaining, however. The weather charts that Gay was looking at for a number of weeks were indicating much lighter winds in this area.

The boat is just jogging along. Very comfortable except for the heeling. We are getting used to it. Everyone is eating and feeling pretty good. So far a turtle, a dolphin and an albatross have been sighted. Since we cleared Cabo Falso, the wind speed has continued to vary between 12 and 18 knots.

Our current location is 21 51.564 N, 111 53.286 W (GoogleEarth compatible format).

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Hawaii Here We Come (half day zero)

Norwegian Steam left the dock at the Marina at Puerto Los Cabos very quietly at 1201 AM, June 3, 2012, bound for Hawaii. Amy, Pete Libbey, and Gay Morris had arrived by air and taxi a bit before five. After stowing most of their gear, we had a Mexican meal at the Container, a very good restaurant in the marina. Then the wait began. Our exit papers stated that we would leave on the third, so that is what we intended to do. Gay was able to get a bit of sleep. Pete took a walk. Amy read. I (Alan) did a little more stowing.

As we slipped away from the dock there was almost no wind and no other people could be seen. When we passed La Playita, the fishing village on the north side of the estuary that forms the marina, however, music and speech erupted from loudspeakers. I am sure it was not about us. Just a Mexican party scheduled to start at midnight. Very typical. For once, loud music late at night was welcome.

My reason for leaving around midnight was to give us time to get past Cabo Falso before the afternoon wind could build. Cabo Falso is notorious for turning back small boats attempting to round it.

There had been a strong sea breeze blowing into the marina during the afternoon, but it had died out by dinner time. I had hoped that the sea outside the marina would be calm too, but that was not be. Instead the water was very choppy which impeded our progress, and gradually, over a number of hours, a head wind built up. When we got to Cabo San Lucas, the wind really began to blow. We raised the main, double reefed, and by the time it was all the way up, the wind speed was 26 knots. A little later, we hoisted the staysail. We then had enough sail up to make about five knots without the engine running, but to do so we had to revise our course to the south. I was willing to do that because a more southerly course put distance between us and Cabo Falso.

In spite of sea conditions rougher than anticipated, none of us suffered from seasickness. Pete and Gay used the patch while Amy and I took Bonine. Both approaches seem to have worked.

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Back to Baja

This time the weather forecasts were "golden." Geary's sonrisanet forecast, Stan's southern crossing forecast and gribs containing data from NOAA's Global Forecast System (GFS) all indicated that Thursday, March 22, would be the optimal day to depart Mazatlan for Baja. Only a little more than two weeks ago, similar rosy forecasts had induced us to round Cabo Corrientes in weather conditions that turned nasty, resulting in a head injury for Sally. This time it was nearly calm all the way from Mazatlan to La Paz, never more than ten knots of wind for 52 hours. We had a beautiful sail for 10 hours, but the rest of the time we motored. With light winds right on the nose most of the way, motoring saved us an extra day on the ocean.

Actually, not all forecasts were golden. Dulce Maestra, a "buddy boat" which accompanied us most of the time we were under sail, employs a commercial weather routing service which told her to expect winds from the SSW when she crossed 108 degrees of longitude. When Jan of Dulce Maestra told me this, I was surprised since it did not agree with the other forecasts. So I was very interested in seeing whether the commercial service could provide a forecast the free services were incapable of. As it turned out, we saw no SSW wind at the 108th meridian or beyond.

We arrived in La Paz in the early afternoon of Saturday, March 24, 2012. We stopped at the excellent fuel dock at Costa Baja to refuel and to register for a slip at the Costa Baja marina. In the evening we enjoyed a truly exceptional meal at the Azul Marino, only a few hundred paces from the boat. This may well be La Paz's best restaurant.

Boogie Boards, Whales, Moonsets, Crossings and Tossings, El Presidente, and Plastic Sheeting

We left Barra de Navidad on Sunday, March 4, with a new piece of equipment on board – a boogie board. (Essential for a swimmer who likes to play in the waves.) Fairly easy to stow, weight-wise, since it's nearly as light as air. We headed again to the beautiful bay at Tenacatita, expecting more boat-to-shore swims and Mexican Train activity. Arriving in the early afternoon after a short sail, we dropped anchor and only then noticed a sort of red tinge in large expanses of the water. We shortly realized this was an algal bloom, or red tide as it's commonly known. A dinghy approached almost as soon as our anchor was down, and we were greeted by Dick of the cutter “Full and By.” More neighbors from the northwest – Dick and his wife Anne are from White Rock, BC. We discussed swimming to shore the next day, if the algae problem was looking better. But on Monday, the algae was at first worse – no expanses of red sea, just a lot of muddy looking plant life suspended in the water. Mid morning, Anne paddled over in a kayak and, pointing to a small beach away from the main span, told us the water was clear there and if we wanted to swim that would be a good place. We rowed over in the dinghy and I rolled off and swam around while Alan paddled back and forth for a while. Then we went to the main beach and walked its length, ending up at the resort hotel at the far end. Returning to the boat and the hot sun shower, we had dinner and prepared to depart early the next morning for what we anticipated would be a 24 hour voyage to La Cruz.

On Tuesday, March 6, we pulled up the anchor and headed north. For about 16 hours we sailed, with two and three sails up. In the middle of the night the wind died, so we lowered all but the main and turned on the engine. We were approaching Cabo Corrientes, and we expected to just motor around it. A few hours later the wind from the north increased dramatically and the waves became high and choppy. NS was being tossed about and Aletta, our tiller pilot, was getting quite a workout. Every time she attempted to make an adjustment to course she made a loud groaning noise. Alan decided he should reef the main and put up the staysail, so we could sail and give the tiller pilot a rest. With Alan at the mast dealing with halyards and reefing lines, I was in the cockpit steering with one hand and trying to manipulate the main sheet with the other. When a wave hit hard, causing NS to heel suddenly, I was tossed violently across the cockpit and slammed into the other side. Alan said seeing me catapult across the cockpit was “probably the most frightening thing I have ever witnessed. First she was was literally flying across the boat. I thought for an instant that she would go overboard. Then she crashed into the deck and suddenly blood was gushing everywhere.”

Alan gave me a bunch of paper towels to staunch the flow of blood and then he gave me all the ice cubes in the freezer. I lay in a daze trying to stop the bleeding, hoping the pain would subside, and wishing the boat would stop bucking around, but of course the seas and wind did not stop immediately just because I was injured. We were 46 nautical miles from La Cruz .

Alan returned to the job of reefing the main and putting up the staysail. He then set Rangval (our Monitor wind-vane self-steering) on an offshore course. Once that was accomplished, we did not have to concern ourselves quite so much with the operation of the boat and could concentrate on first-aid.

Luckily it calmed down later in the afternoon and we were able to start enjoying the trip again. The second morning we watched an almost-full moon set in the west as the sun rose in the east. Magical! On Thursday morning, March 8, we were really glad to pull into La Cruz, our 24 hour journey having turned into 48.

I visited Dr. Pepper (seriously, his last name is Pimienta), who cleaned my head wound, applied more butterfly bandages (the window of opportunity for stitching had long since closed) and prescribed antibiotics and ibuprofen. He also recommended an x-ray to see if my skull had been fractured, which I resisted at first and then reconsidered when we ran into him on the street and he made me feel guilty about it. Upon having my head examined, I was declared fracture-free. I will have an interesting forehead scar and an interesting tale to go along with it.

We stayed in La Cruz nearly a week. During that time all of Banderas Bay in general, and La Cruz in particular, was the site of a huge sailing regatta, with boat races of all different sizes of craft from sailboards up to 70-some footers. We mingled with sailing teams from all over the world (lots of Californians), heard loud rock bands until all hours of the night, experienced fireworks 50 feet from NS, watched and listened to the drone of helicopters coming and going all day and night, and even saw El Presidente, Felipe Calderon himself, as he cruised by in a luxury power yacht to survey some of the advances his country is making in the tourism industry.

Leaving La Cruz Wednesday, March 14, we headed for Chacala, 46 nautical miles north. As we did on our last visit, we put out bow and stern anchors to keep NS aligned with the incoming swell, in addition to the flopper-stopper. On Thursday I swam to the beach and Alan rowed. I played around in the surf with the boogie board, as Alan had lunch and a beer in a palapa restaurant, to the background of continuous oom-pah music. Tubas are really big in Mexico, pun intended.

Thursday, after Alan spent considerable time and effort dismantling the flopper-stopper, retrieving the stern anchor and deflating the dinghy, we finally started out on our next overnight (hopefully only one night this time) voyage – to Mazatlan. The wind was right on our nose, so we motored. After 20 hours underway, we discovered that the reason our speed had been slowed by a knot and a half for the preceding four hours was that we were dragging a fishnet. Alan cut it off with a kelp-cutting hook knife on a telescoping handle and then we proceeded. Mid-morning we passed some fishermen who chased us in their panga to point out that we had caught their long line. They were able to extricate it from the rudder. About an hour later, the engine suddenly slowed way down and our speed was reduced to about 2 .5 knots, even though the RPMs were still at the usual 1700. Black smoke was billowing from the exhaust.

We shut down the engine and I jumped in the water with snorkel gear to have a look. Wrapped tightly around and around the propeller shaft was a bunch of plastic sheeting. Steadying myself with a couple of lines, I tried to keep myself under the boat enough to saw off the plastic with a serrated knife. After many attempts, sawing a little each time, sometimes thwarted by the swell as the waves swept over the snorkel and filled it with water, other times popping out of the water like a cork, I finally ended up riding the rudder like a horse, bracing my foot between the propeller and the shaft and basically doing whatever else it took to keep sawing away at all the ragged black plastic. I was chilled but elated when the last of the plastic finally floated free. The boat resumed its normal speed, with an engine that was no longer straining.

We were about 32 miles from Mazatlan at that point and now several hours behind schedule, but were still determined to arrive before dark. We pulled into the marina shortly after the sun went down. Luckily we had been there twice before and most of the channel markers (most being the operative word) are lighted, so we made it safely to the dock.

The upside of this trip was that we saw lots of whales. Off our port beam we saw two humpbacks breaching repeatedly for several minutes. Later, not 40 feet from the cockpit, there was a snorting, puffing sound, and two whales rolled halfway up out of the water. And then somewhat later a group of whales frolicked and played and flapped their tails a few hundred feet astern of NS.

The first thing we did in Mazatlan was to have pizza and wine for dinner, a sort of "deliverance" celebration as Alan called it. And although I've long abhorred the plastic waste that is cluttering up the planet, I now have a personal vendetta against it.

Chacala, La Cruz, Tenacatita, Barra

After an early start from San Blas on Saturday, February 18, we spent the night anchored off the beautiful beach at Chacala. We set both bow and stern anchors in order to keep the boat pointed in the direction of the incoming swell, thus minimizing her tendency to roll. We did not go ashore. In the morning, we continued on to Banderas Bay, arriving at Marina La Cruz just before sunset on Sunday, the 19th. As we walked up into town to find some dinner, we were disappointed to discover that Claudia's little restaurant has closed. We learned that she and her family have moved to Guadalajara. We ended up eating in a new restaurant in a new building on the small traffic circle on Langosta avenue, called Tortuga Bay. Very good seafood and wine, but they could improve their meals a lot by including vegetables.

In all, we spent six nights at La Cruz, which we really like.  The marina is excellent. They seem to have solved the wifi Internet problems they had last year. The town with its many restaurants and its music scene is as vibrant as ever. There is a fine path along the seawall, perfect for jogging. There is a beach nearby where Sally went swimming in the surf several times. We ate dinner and danced at Philo's and had drinks and danced at Anna Banana's.

We took the bus into Puerto Vallarta and walked the malecon and had fine meal at the Vitea Waterfront Bistro. I love the statues along that seawall for their whimsy. They share that with those on the La Paz malecon. Those in Mazatlan tend to be a bit too heroic and pretentious.

On Saturday, February 25, we left La Cruz mid-afternoon and headed for Cabo Corrientes, rounding that cape in the early morning hours, when the seas tend to be the calmest. We continued on throughout the day, arriving at Bahia de Tenacatita just before sunset on the 26th. There is an active cruiser community in that beautiful bay and every morning on the VHF cruisers' net there is some activity or other proposed. That particular Monday, a round of Mexican Train, a card game, was on the agenda, scheduled for the palapa restaurant on the beach. At 2 PM, Darrel from SV Over-Heated came by in his dinghy, ferried Sally over to his boat where she jumped in the water and was joined by Rita from Over-Heated and Patricia from Paloma for a swim to shore. Meanwhile, I completed a few chores, pumped up our inflatable dinghy, and rowed in to observe Sally and the other Mexican Train players in action. When I rowed back to the boat, I accompanied Sally, not because there was the slightest possibility that she could not swim the distance, but to reduce the risk of her being run over by a panga.

Last year, our dinghy was swamped when we tried to motor to shore in the Tenacatita surf, requiring a couple of hours of work to get the salt water out of the outboard. To avoid a recurrence, I left the motor off of the dinghy this time, carried my possessions in a water-proof bag and was prepared to go into the water if necessary. As it turned out, I only got my back a little wet on the way out.

After a second night in Tenacatita, we left for Barra, arriving in the Marina Puerto Navidad in the late afternoon of February 28. We got a slip right next to our friends from last year, Ron and Pam on Shadowfax, and just a few slips away from Neil and Kristen on OutRider. We immediately took the water taxi into Barra to meet Marie and Steve from Saben, whom we had met in San Blas and who were heading for points south in the morning. We had a great meal at Los Arcos. Just like last year, we watched the tail end of the Carnival parade from that restaurant. The next evening we had dinner with Ron and Pam at Fortinos, a restaurant on the lagoon in Colimilla, a short walk from the marina. They told us about their trip last spring to Panama on friend's boat. Last night we ate with Neil at Poco Loco, a pizza place in Barra, and learned about his trip to Japan after the tsunami last year, as part of the relief effort.

We head north tomorrow morning and plan to spend the night anchored in Tenacatita again.

Our current location is N 19 11.736, W 104 40.975.

San Blas

Our delayed departure from Mazatlan for Chacala gave us a chance to spend more time with David Winter, the owner of a cutter named Gambol. David is a long time resident of British Columbia, originally from near Cambridge, England, who has spent the last several seasons sailing in Mexico. This season, he had been in San Blas, 25 nautical miles closer to Mazatlan than is Chacala, for three months. Because we were concerned about the San Blas reputation for the small biting insects called jejenes (no-see-ums), we had avoided that pueblo last year and intended to do so again this year and head straight to Chacala. We have no mosquito nets for our portlights (windows) and hatches, and we had no desire to experience bothersome insects, itching and, in the worst case, a possible tropical disease.
 
David convinced us that San Blas' bad reputation for insects is undeserved, that the bugs are only really around at sunup and sundown, and that with a little effort you could avoid them at those times. In any case, Sally had bought some wedding veil type netting in La Paz and had some ideas for rigging it up in the hatches and portlights. So we decided to visit San Blas, if possible.

Why might it not be possible? San Blas is located at the point where a river enters the sea and it is necessary to cross a sandbar in order to enter the river estuary and harbor. At times that the ocean swell is high, it can be dangerous to cross this bar.

Fortunately, the sea was quite calm when we arrived early Monday morning, after a 24 hour passage from Mazatlan. On David's recommendation, I had downloaded a short "San Blas Cruiser's Guide" which contained a list of five GPS waypoints for navigating the bar. I entered these waypoints into our chart plotter and they lead us into the estuary without a problem.

On the journey from Mazatlan we saw our first whales of the season. Two sightings, in fact -- one in the morning and one in the evening. And during the moonless night we experienced an amazing new delight. A group of dolphins played in our wake, diving under our bow, making passes in pairs over and over again. We would just think they were gone when there would be a nearby "whoosh!" and yet another pair engulfed in phosphorescence would swoop by. They accompanied us for a full 15 or 20 minutes. Dolphins often seem drawn to boats -- we speculated that perhaps they were further encouraged that night by the phosphorescence that already surrounded Norwegian Steam.

San Blas has an interesting history. Although the Spanish arrived here in 1531, for almost two centuries the area remained nothing more than a place for ships to reprovision and to get fresh water from the nearby Tovara spring.Then in 1768 the Spanish recognized a need to protect their interests in Alta California and the Pacific Northwest, in response to the Russian development of Alaska. They chose San Blas as the base for colonizing their territories to the north, and established a naval base here. The town grew quickly, eventually reaching a size three times that of the current population. In 1810, early in Mexico's war of independence, the town was taken by revolutionaries and a long slow decline began. Today San Blas survives on agriculture, fishing and tourism.

On Tuesday, we went on a "jungle tour" into the Tovara National Park with David and Betty Lou Walsman from SV Decade Dance, Marie Hoiland from SV Saben and Molly and Steve, two of David's friends from his Peace Corps days in El Salvador. With Jose, our very knowledgeable guide, we motored slowly in a panga through a large mangrove swamp full of protected wildlife. At close range we saw a number of crocodiles of varying sizes, from babies to a large male that must have been a dozen feet long. We also saw, and photographed enthusiastically, dozens of different kinds of birds, including great gray and great blue herons, boat-billed herons, and egrets. The panga tour finished and turned around at the Tovara spring, which pours fresh water into the swamp. Some visitors opt to travel at a higher speed on the tour, preferring a swim in the spring to ogling the wildlife. We think our leisurely trip was the most interesting choice.

After the jungle tour, we walked to the top of a hill called Cerro de San Basilio. First we explored a cemetery with many colorful graves and mausoleums, then toured the ruins of the El Templo de la Virgen del Rosario, a church built in 1769. With the decline of San Blas, the church was abandoned in 1872. The church bells that had rung for many years from the site on the hill were first moved to a church in the pueblo, and then were consigned to storage, hanging from a crude timber scaffold. In 1882 a travel article in Harper's magazine about San Blas mentioned the bells. A line drawing depicting the bells hanging from the wooden timbers illustrated the article. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, nearly on his deathbed at the time, was so moved by the article and especially the plight of the beautiful church bells now stilled and languishing from disuse that he wrote "The Bells of San Blas," in their honor. It was to be Longfellow's last poem -- a few days later he died.


At the top of the hill are the remains of the fort built in 1770 as part of the Spanish expansion of San Blas as a center of naval power. From the fort's hilltop vantage point we could see for miles into the countryside, down the river and out to sea.

Having always avoided eating at the golden arches in our travels, we can now say we ate at McDonalds in San Blas. This McDonalds, however, is a local San Blas eatery established by a Mexican family named McDonald in 1952. We also ate at Chef Tony's La Isla restaurant, which houses a fabulous collection of sea shell art. We felt we were dining in a veritable octopus' garden, as the song goes. All the shell collages, "chandeliers," mirror frames, and hanging planters  were created over a 30 year period by the grandfather of the people who currently run the restaurant.


Tomorrow morning we leave for Chacala, 25 miles to the south.

Our current position is N 21 32.642, W 105 17.569 (GoogleEarth format).

Unexpected Delay

We planned to depart Mazatlan for Chacala early Friday morning, but it is now Saturday afternoon and we are still here. We knew that Sally had a small infection on her leg but assumed that it was no big deal. A call to the consulting nurse service at Group Health changed our minds. They said that Sally should be on an antibiotic called clindamycin and that the infection should be treated with great respect because the bacteria might be MRSA.

Sally has been taking oral clindamycin for about 24 hours now. She also applies hot compresses frequently while keeping the infection site elevated. The infection, which is something like a boil, has "deflated" and diminished in size significantly since she began treating it.

We plan to leave about 6:30 tomorrow morning (Sunday).

Mazatlan

Robert, Sally and Alan at the Lighthouse (El Faro)

Feeding Pigeons in the Central Plaza

We've been in Mazatlan for a week now, and tomorrow we leave at first light, headed south to La Cruz, just north of Puerto Vallarta. On the way, we plan to stop at Chacala, a bay that we visited last year, while heading the other direction. The first leg, from Mazatlan to Chacala will be an overnighter. We plan to stay two nights anchored in Chacala in order to catch up on sleep, then head for La Cruz, which we should make in a single day.

The high points of our stay in Mazatlan were the walk on the malecon, a hike up to the lighthouse which sits on top of a little mountain and affords a great view of the entire area and the meal that Robert Rackl treated us to at Topolo, a simply wonderful restaurant.

Sally and Alan on the Mazatlan Malecon

A meal at Topolo starts with a salsa created at your table to the liking of everyone in your party. The waiter with his cart of a dozen ingredients asks about the likes and dislikes of each guest. Sally, for instance, cannot eat avocados, Robert cannot eat anything very spicy and Sally prefers her salsas very mild. The waiter built the salsa progressively. At the stage that there were still no avocados and nothing spicy, he served Sally's portion to her. After adding avocado, he served Robert. I, of course, wanted the works. We all agreed that the salsa was fabulous.

The meal finished with "bananas foster", again created at the table, with three liqueurs, lots of flame and even sparks from cinnamon thrown into the flame. What a show and what a delicious desert!

Alan and Robert in Plazuela Machado after a Great Meal

In the courtyard of Topopo is a sizable avocado tree that is over one hundred years old.  It produces avocados as big as cantaloupes. The waiter said they do not use these avocados for the guacamole served in the restaurant because guests are not prepared for the taste of the big avocados, but he personally loves them and makes them into guacamole for his own family.

The Crewman Departs

Robert Rackl flew back to Seattle on Monday, having been with us for two weeks. He told us that he had a fine time and that the voyage from La Paz to Mazatlan was especially memorable. We are grateful to him for all the help he gave us and for bringing some needed boat parts down with him from Seattle. Before he left, Robert produced seven hand-written pages for his memoirs.