Day 9 - Finally headed east

Saturday Night 9pm Hawaii time
1218 nautical miles from Oahu
1551 nautical miles to the Golden Gate

Yesterday afternoon spinniker run took us NE, and finally making it up to 41 deg N. But when we go there this morning, the wind died, and we thought it was the end of sailing for a while. Time to start the engine and motor across the center of the Pacific High, which would mean about 3 days of listening to the engine. Not my favorite part of the trip. But, after only a few hours of motoring, the wind filled in from the South. We reset the spinnacker and turned off the engine. We now sailing almost straight east. Almost on the great circle route (the shortest path on the surface of a sphere) to San Francisco. We won't be able to sail directly there though. The plan is to continue east until the wind changes again and starts to come from the NW. Things are looking pretty good weather and wind wise at the moment. Everyone is happy about that.

Other than that it was a pretty regular day of standing watches, napping, eating, reading, etc.

The cooking part of the day has been a bit interesting. When we loaded up the boat with food, Adrien put the 5 pound package of ground beef from Costco in the freezer. Now we have a solid 5 pound block of ground beef, and want to use a bit of it for tonight's dinner. So into the tool box goes Adrien and he sets up a little butch shop on the aft deck. He has a vise to hold the meat, and is alternating between his hacksaw, and a Japanese double sided pull saw to cut the 5 pound lump into 5 one pound lumps. Bits of beef shavings/sawdust are flying all over. But the job gets done, and we have an excellent beef, beans, corn, and rice "chili" dinner. Nice work. Hope he cleaned the saws both before and after cutting the meat or the engine room may develop a bit of a funky smell in the next few days.

That's about all for now. Lance is on watch, Leo Kottke is on the stereo, and I'm going to get a bit of sleep before my 1am-4am watch.

-steve

25-JUL-2010 07:13 GMT
41 deg 34.362 N
155 deg 46.830 W
course 77 deg T speed 6.1 knots
Wind 11 knots from the South
Seas about 2 feet, water temp 66.6 deg F
Air temp 76 deg F 61% humidity 1025 mb pressure