Day 6 - Happiness is Seven Knots in a Light Breeze

For those of you asking about today's position report, it was transmitted about an hour later than usual. As mentioned below, the wind was building as I came off watch and we decided that dowsing the chute was a priority task. But, by the time you read this, our latest position should be available on YOTREPS. FYI, below is what a position report looks like; it is a machine-generated email that is addressed to, and read by, a machine. Our Sailmail software reads our position, and course and speed, and the time, from our GPS unit. It fills in those blanks on a form input window. For the other items, I look out a window, and/or stick a wet finger in the air, and come up with my best guess for each of the blanks. Then I click on "Send to YOTREPS" and all that info gets converted into the emails you see below.

This is today's report:

AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: CIRRUS10
TIME: 2010/06/06 17:49 (Note from Chris: this is 0749 HST)
LATITUDE: 30-07.55N
LONGITUDE: 152-52.25W
COURSE: 072T
SPEED: 6.5
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 12
WIND_DIR: SE
SWELL_DIR: SW
SWELL_HT: 1.8M
SWELL_PER: 12
CLOUDS: 20%
VISIBILITY: 10
COMMENT:

This is yesterday's report:

AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: CIRRUS10
TIME: 2010/06/05 16:49 (Note from Chris: this is 0649 HST)
LATITUDE: 28-41.44N
LONGITUDE: 154-10.88W
COURSE: 031T
SPEED: 6.6
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 8
WIND_DIR: SW
SWELL_DIR: W
SWELL_HT: 1.8M
SWELL_PER: 12
CLOUDS: 10%
VISIBILITY: 10
COMMENT:

If, after reading all this, you still see a discrepancy on YOTREPS, please let me know and I'll contact Mr. Yotreps.

Back to today's blog entry, already in progress: Last night, at sunset, we were still flying the "wedding dress", but the wind was getting light and our speed was dropping into the two knot range. So we had to make a decision: leave the chute up and hope for the best, or take it down so we could fire up the d-sail. So we decided to defer the decision for a half-hour. At the end of the half-hour we saw that the average speed had climbed into the three-knot range, which was good enough for overnight. We agreed that, if the wind died, we'd do what we had to do, but, if the breeze filled in, we would look like geniuses, at least in our own eyes. And guess what; throughout the night, the breeze was light but steady and it gradually filled in. When I went on watch at 0300, our speed had been in the fours for a while and was occasionally in the fives. During my watch, it built further until we were routinely in the sixes, with plenty of sevens thrown in. I even saw an 8.00. But once Kathy was in the saddle, and I was below reading your emails, Bill decided that, since we hadn't yet had a knockdown, but the wind was still building, it was inevitable that we'd get a surprise sooner rather than later. In fact, the GPS was hitting 8.5 knots from time-to-time, with lots of big rolls. So, all hands on deck, let's get the chute down and stowed, let's get the spinnaker fence down and stowed, let's get the jib out and drawing, and then let's, the off watch, go below for coffee and cookies.

BTW, in the spinnaker photo, if you look carefully around the bottom of the "wedding dress", you'll see that it's slightly shredded in a few spots. That's why it's flying on two poles. Before we launched the second (leeward) pole, the chute was tending to drag on the bow pulpit occasionally and we think that's what started the shredding action. Of course, when it comes to expensive sails, once it starts shredding, nobody knows where it will stop. Well, actually, we do know; at the sail maker's front door.

Today's other "stop the presses" photo is from yesterday, when it was incredibly hot and sunny, and 76 degree saltwater was deemed to be the ideal stuff for a beachfront shower. Very cooling. Of course, I, the on-watch crew, was hunkered in the shade under the dodger wearing my technical long-sleeve Pacific Cup sun-shirt, and my long-legged convertible REI sun-pants, with my brimmed camo sun-hat and with 45-proof sunscreen running into my eyes. Really pleasant. And somewhat warm too. Of course, I wasn't hunkered when I took the picture, but otherwise, definitely hunkered.

OK, enough for now. As I leave you, here is our position report:TIME: 2010/06/06 19:56 (That's UTC, 0956 in Hawaii)
LATITUDE: 30-12.23N
LONGITUDE: 152-37.38W
COURSE: 067T
SPEED: 6.6
It's sunny and clear here. ~~Chris