Coming Soon...Near You

From Cynthia's Mom

Cynthia and Glenn opted to stay in Port Angeles a few days to restock and refresh.    Besides looking like castaways...and very skinny...(I've seen them!)  they are doing fine.    I would say that the simple secret to losing weight must be manning a sail boat in stormy weather.  (Hmm.  Can I advertise that on the web and make tons  of money?   oooh maybe not the best choice of words ).   They plan to head to Friday Harbor tomorrow (Tuesday) and assess their access to computers there.    They will restart their blogs as soon as they can get to a computer.  Stay tuned.......

Eureka! We've found them!

October 7, 2011:  From Cynthia's mom

For those of you who have been worried about Cynthia and Glenn....they are safe!
After their last blog,  they were hit by a big wave that swamped their nav table and toasted both of their computers.... thus their ability to communicate with us through their blog or email went kapoof (or kasplash).   Their single side band and VHF radios continued to work  just fine. 

So where are they?  They are motoring very slowly with calm seas against an ebb tide at the entrance to the Straights of Juan de Fuca.   When they reached Neah Bay,  Cindy was able to get a Verizon signal so she called Verizon, who called me, and we were able to reactivate her phone.    At least they will have a way to communicate whenever they can receive a signal.

I will let them tell their exciting tales when they reach port.   Although the remaining distance isn't very far it may take some time to reach Friday Harbor.    They are both exhausted and because they are motoring,  one of them needs to hand steer while the other keeps close watch for the considerable boat/ship traffic in the Straights.   Also,  the Customs offices keep office hours and they can't even anchor while they wait for the office to open.   They may choose to use the Customs office at Port Angeles instead of Friday Harbor depending on the time of day of their arrival.   They will definitely want to rest at some point.

We can almost reach out and touch them.   They should arrive at port by Sunday,  and giving them a couple of days to rest and get to a computer,  you should hear an update early next week.   If something changes,   I'll provide another update.

Stiorm Update

We are now taking the brunt of this storm, being pummeled by gale force winds (Force 8). Surprisingly, and fortunately, the seas are not yet very big. So our current tactic is to run before the storm using the stays'l only. We are making over six knots to the northeast. This is why we wanted to gain so much sea room off the Oregon coast. We can now use any of the standard storm tactics - running, heaving-to, lying ahull, deploying a sea anchor - without fear of running ashore. From the Grib files, it looks like we will have quite a few hours of strong south to southwest winds, so we will keep running for now - they are taking us right where we want to go.

Things are still comfy inside, with the exception that we are taking in water occasionally through the skylight. When a wave breaks over the cabin sometimes it sneaks under the upside down dinghy that is covering the skylight, and comes through into the cabin, dousing the off-watch person sleeping on the settee below. It's on my to-do list to seal them better, but I haven't gotten to it yet - that particular list is always very long. But otherwise things are good inside: warm and dry.

Anyway, I just wanted everyone to know that we are fine, and finally making progress north again.

Update: I didn't get this posted in time, and now things are changing. The winds and seas are increasing, so for the near future, we will be running under bare poles - no sails up. This is the tactic we used years ago leaving the Pacific Northwest, and maybe it's fitting that we use it coming back.

Position Update 10/2

As Glenn mentioned earlier, there is a large low pressure system moving into the area tonight and tomorrow. Fortunately, according to the latest GRIB file forecast, we may have made enough south in the last few days of drifting that we could see just the fringes of wind from that system. Maybe. This is weather forecasting in the Pacific Northwest which is very difficult, and the predictions change rapidly. But, if the latest forecast is correct, the low will be moving north of us, and bringing us strong winds from the south and west. This is ideal for us because those winds will push us in exactly the direction we want to go. Of course, we don't want to go too fast initially because we don't actually want to catch up with this system.

So, for now, we are just flying the stays'l which is one of our two smallest sails. The stays'l is situated on the foredeck so it is much easier to take down quickly than the storm jib which flies from the tip of the bow sprit. In big seas, the bow sprit is a very wet roller coaster of a ride which is fun at an amusement park.. not so much out here.

For a long time tonight, we just drifted further south in calm seas with less than 5 knots of wind - the proverbial calm before the storm. The winds have now shifted and are blowing out of the south at just under 20 knots, and slowly strengthening. We are making way very comfortably toward Cape Flattery at just under 4 knots.

Our current data:
Date/Time: 10/2 0300 PDT
Position: 41D 49.5N, 128D 52.5W
COG/SOG: 020T @ 2.9 kts
Wind: S 15-20 kts
Seas: ? 1-3 ft
Sky: Dark (no moon), 50% Cloud coverage

Waiting to get Pasted

The next storm that will hit us is a big one. In preparation for this, we have altered course to almost due west to gain more mileage from shore. We are in the most danger from land, not from the winds and seas. We, and Columbine, can take some pretty harsh weather. But not when we are against a shoreline. So we now have about 200nm sea room off the Oregon coast, with more being made right now, and are fully prepared for this next pounding. Hopefully the winds will cooperate after this and let us sail into the Strait.

Conditions onboard are great - it is warm and dry inside, with no real indication of the winds and seas howling outside. Cynthia is restitching the poor shredded yankee jib. I have been entering all our logbook data into the computer. As of our last entry, we have sailed 4572nm from Papeete, Tahiti, and are on Day 39 . Our average speed for the entire trip is 4.84 kts. That's almost a knot faster than the trip south, where we averaged only 4.18 kts. And this was mostly upwind!

Our current data is:
Date/Time: 10/1 137pm PDT
Position: 41D 55.7N, 128D 36.4W
COG/SOG: 282T @ 4.2 kts
Wind: N 10-15 kts
Seas: N 10-15 ft
Sky: 50% Cloud coverage