VALIS – July 7
Good afternoon from VALIS, going slow.
Position at 2:00 PM PDT: Lat 31deg 56min N, Longitude 130deg 17min W.
Course is 225deg magnetic, speed is a frustrating 5.5 kts. Wind is about 8 knots out of the northeast.
We are sailing through the southeast corner (ridge) if the Pacific High, trying to balance wind speed and wind angle (thus our boat speed), with the distance we have to sail. We can get more wind by sailing more south (and farther), or sail a shorter course by sailing more north, but getting less wind and therefore going slower. In addition, we are trying to guess what the conditions will be several days ahead of us, so we can position ourselves accordingly. If it is any consolation, the rest of the race fleet seems to be sailing both north and south of us.
I forgot to mention, early AM on July 6, we had our Independence Day Celebration, in which we lit a couple of small fireworks off the stern. Woohoo!
Yesterday, we dropped our genoa and staysail, and put up the heavy asymmetrical spinnaker. Then the wind dropped, so we took taht down, and launched the new light-air asymmetrical spinnaker — very nice! At dusk, the wind looked like the wind was building, so we took down the light spinnaker, and put the heavy one back up. As it turned out, we could have left up the light one.
Today, we decided to head a little further south, which put the wind more behind us. This let us drop the heavy asymmetrical spinnaker, put up the pole, and fly the new, light-air symmetrical spinnaker. We’re not going too fast, but we would be going much slower without it.
I am attaching a google earth file of our last day’s sail.