Before we left Mazatlan Mija was kind enough to ask Don to give us some weather to get to the Trades. Once leaving Cabo Don said we should head south west to N 18 degrees to catch the trades. With a large storm hitting the west coast of California the trades had headed further south and if we wanted to meet up with them we should head south too. The wind and waves picked up from the North West as we headed south making this a really rough start to our passage. We had one reef in the main and our Genoa was up, we were headed 200 Degrees True making 6.5 kts! Later that evening Justin was checking the pilot charts and he saw some small islands in the vicinity of where we were going. Without any actual charts for this area or these islands we estimated their location and decided to avoid N 19 and W 115-120. This night after I made a chickpea curry Justin promptly got sick. He caught some kind of 24 hour bug that left him weak and tired. He still came out to do his watches while I encouraged him to eat some dry cheerios. As the day grew to night on our first day off to Hawaii we took down the Genoa and put up our working jib and put in another reef in the main.
Before leaving Mazatlan we downloaded the week predictions of passageweather.com and noted that later in the week there is no wind south of B aja. So in order for us to catch the Trades we need to be as far west from Baja as we can. That proved difficult in the following 6 days with us motor sailing every night as the wind died and then increasing everyday from the North West, West direction.Sailing up-wind, not what we expected. Along with the variation in wind we often had swell from the North and North West making the boat uncomfortable.
On May 9th the wind started coming from the North East direction but the shifted to North. This trend of North East wind shifting to North and back continued for 6 more days. We have now been sailing for 15 days, our position is N 18o56.3' W 130o53.8', we are 1343 nautical Miles away from Hilo Bay (half way there) and we have yet to encounter steady trade winds. Every day because of the wind direction changing we are either putting up our Genoa or replacing it with our working jib, reefing the main or shaking it out putting up the mizzen or taking it down. Sail changes can take up to an hour to execute if all 3sails need to be dealt with. This often removes an hour in someones “off time” and can be frustrating due simply for lack of rest. Through the entire trip we performed, on average, 3 sail changes a day for 27days.....it got old fast. We did get better by the 3d week in predicting changes and executing the sail trimmings. Our main reason for adjusting the sails was because of the complaints we heard from Auto (our wheel auto pilot). If the boat is unbalanced, as in there is some weather helm, you can hear the belt slipping in Auto or he starts screaming that he cant keep his course. So as to not upset Auto we spent time making the boat balanced so he would be happy and not cause mutiny.
We decided after we left Cabo to use our fuel to motor sail down to the location where the trade winds are located versus saving the fuel for the 500 nm east of Hawaii that had no wind (we saw this on passageweather.com before we left.) Thus by Day 11 we had used up the fuel allocated to get to the trades and that was our first 24 hours of sailing since leaving the continent. The rest of the fuel onboard was allocated to charging our batteries and for getting into port.
Days 11 to 15 the wind continued to shift from North to North East, the swell was increasing from the North. On Day 14 (18o58.3' N,130o27.7'W, Heading 270oTrue) we saw wind from the North East at 25 Knots and the swell was confused with a 10-13 foot swell from the North East and cresting. This was very uncomfortable and lasted for 24 hours until finally not sleeping made us head 260 True, so that the swell could be on our quarter and maybe we could get some sleep (it was still hard to sleep). On Day 16 (also May 16th) the wind was 20 knots from the North East and the swell was 8 ft from the North East.The last 72 hours with the rough swell and wind had made Auto unhappy. Day 16 Justin prepared Auto for a make shift surgery. We rapidly removed him from the helm as I took over and justin opened him up. He found 3 fractures associated with where the screws held Auto onto the wheel. Justin used some resistol epoxy putty to repair the fractures and Auto woke from the anesthesia back on the wheel and he was 100%!
By the 17th the wind was down to 10-15 kts from the North East and the swell was 3-5 ft.....finally we could get some sleep, we were in the TRADES!
From Cabo to the Trades, we saw dolphins (900 nautical miles from Baja!), Boobies (don't know if they were blue footed boobies), and I saw some whales the second day after we left Cabo (I think most have already migrated north to NA to feed). We saw one tanker, actually Justin was on watch and failed to see it, I came on deck and noticed it right away. On day 8 Justin turned on the water pump, heard it pumping and no water came out of the kitchen tap. He investigated and noticed that a piece of the carbon filter had broken off and he had just pumped 5 Gallons of water into the bilge. 2 things with this story 1) fast thinking on Justins part meant that we didn't pump 20 Gallons into the bilge (I would have stood there and decided that the tank was empty) and 2) good thing we keep the water pump off when we are not using it as we could have inadvertently pumped 100 Gallons into the bilge.
600 miles and still no trades
Justin looking for trade winds
