1/8/2012

It was too good to last and it ended yesterday about 1500 local...the calm winds accelerated to the tens, then the teens and occasionally into the low twenties...all on the nose...During my watch last night I must have barber hauled the main to opposite tacks over 50 times...every time I'd get it set and to stop flogging, the wind would shift 15 or 20 degrees to the opposite tack...I began to get the feeling that King Neptune had an eye on us and was having his jollies...You've just got to grin and bear it, it could always be a lot worse!

With the big wind came the big chop and swells...occasionally practically stopping us in our tracks...it's enough to make a grown man cry when he sees VMG of 2 kts!  The forecast for this morning is for the wind to start to veer to the east...it's been doing that VERY slowly for the past couple of hours...if it continues we'll start to get some power out of the main and we may even be able to roll out the jib and sail for a while...so far sailing has been hard to come by...

We're set up to take advantage of any eastern angles predicted once we get north Cedros Island (we'll be about 50nm w of Cedros, headed for the north end of Guadalupe)...the gribs show winds from SD to Guadalupe out of the NW and we wanted to get a decent port tack angle...around Cedros, the gribs show wind veering east starting this morning and remaining east of north for a couple of days then shifting back to nw...by getting a little offshore we hope to be able to take advantage of the normal nw winds common to this coast.

We've seen an big increase in ship traffic...several freighters and tankers have come within 3 miles of us...I always call on the radio and they'll frequently alter course slightly, but they never reply even when identified by name (thanks to AIS data rec'd).

We've switched back to SD time...and got the SD offshore cold wx to go along with it.  I'm now in full foul wx gear for my watches...I'm going to have to have a talk with the union guy...