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.