Sunset #3

Not much to report today. Not much wind, not much sea life and not much of anything to do….

We are heading a little south of west in the hopes that the wind will be a little more stable around 18 degrees south and we should be out past Isla Revillagigedo sometime tomorrow, which means there won’t be any more hunks of rock until we near Hawaii.

It’s amazing how different the ocean is and the boat handles when the wind just isn’t blowing. Two days ago we put in back to back 160 mile days and now we’re are looking at three 100 mile days. I know there isn’t much we can do except stay positive and wait for the wind to fill in (which it looks like it will).

Doesn’t this ocean know I have a schedule to keep, places to be and people to meet…

Another day of sailing! We had good pressure all day and all night and were sailing pretty much 40-50 degrees off the wind to keep our boat speed up. The wind was from the NNW through the NNE so our course was up and down a bit but we made some good distance directly towards Soccoro Island and are in fact point right at the Island now and are only 50 miles away.

If we can keep our boat speed up in a West to South West direction I’m hoping we will miss a low pressure area forming around Soccoro tomorrow, by which time we just might be 100 miles further along and starting to see some true Sustained NE winds in about two days.

We had a little (or not so little) visitor last night who hung out on our dinghy for almost the entire night as we closed in on land again. not only did he get a free ride, but he also had full use of our dinghy as el bano and he didn’t even have to pay the 5 paseos as is customary in Mexico.

Last night I woke up to some swearing as Jean had experienced a minor rope burn when working with a reef in the main. All is good and we were able to get some ice on it right away and everything looks fine. Nothing like the time Kristine really worked he hands over.

Position update at 1200 local time March 25, 2016:
18 42.563 N
109 58.156 W
161 nautical mile noon to noon run
2706 miles to destination
6.5 kts SOG
274 COG

We are on our way! The forecast looks to have variable winds for the next week or so, however if we can just stay area of some of the slower wind patches I’m sure we will make excellent time.

We had a great run for the first four hours out of Neuvo Vallarta as we left the breakwater exactly at 2pm. We beat our way out of the bay until 6 pmand had a nice lift to clear Cabo Corrientes. At 6pm the wind died and we motored and motor sailed for about two hours until the wind filled in from behind and we could hoist the spinnaker just before dark.

We ran all night with the kite up in 10-17 kts of wind however the majority was at about 15kts, which forced us to continually turn the boat further south as the wind bagan to move forward. Since the wind was in the mid teens we just couldn’t carry the asymmetrical  spinnaker closer than 105-110 degrees apparent and were forced to head further south than I had wanted to.

Being our first night out it was nice to just keep sailing without waking people up to douse the kite, however at about 5:15 this morning I decided enough was enough and George and I dropped the kite began beating back up to Soccoro Island.

The wind has held between 10-14 kts for most of the day and we are making great speed. We are constantly seeing boat speeds in the 8-9 kts range and SOG numbers about a knot less due to some counter current. I even saw 11.5 kts speed through the water last night with the kite up!

We are currently at 19 15.193 N 107 19.150 W sailing at 7.5 SOG and 9.0 boat speed on a COG of 265. Since leaving NUevo Vallarta we’ve done 165 miles via GPS, 185 via the log and are 145 nautical miles straight line from our starting point. Only 2868 miles to go!