Mexico-Hawaii Log3

• Day 6

Finally some action. Note that I would prefer skip it :) we have been struggling all night and morning with light wind aft and some sea, which makes sailing tricky and usually is synonym of noise and flapping in the rigging and sails. Dodging a couple of storm clouds, we have been surprised with too much sail out by one cloud that was hiding the tail of a small system, it seems. We were off for half a day of running in 30knots and rain with a reef jib only. We had some serious effort to reduce sails and during the action we lost some seams on the jib sail that would need some fixing later on, when the wind and sea calm down a bit - likely tomorrow.
Not much breakages so far except a closet door that Gilles broke through after losing balance. Wind stepped down to something more manageable but seas are still heavy, I would say around 4m crest for the big ones. Sky turned blue again and it looks we are getting closer to those elusive steady trades winds.
Almost forgot, we passed 660 miles today, pretty close of  one third of the 2200 we have to travel We can still hope to reach Maui in 12 days from now. Getting Closer ! Right now, the wind is still strong - like 20-25 knots - but nothing insane. Waves are still really big though. They are not breaking, then it is quite safe. One or two crashed on the boat, this is still impressive, even if this is only the white mush. I suppose they came from this low up North. The boat is behaving well this is reassuring in big sea. We practiced the Storm jib install, was not really needed yet, but it was tricky because of we could use one day of easy sailing and sun though. Gilles could not even do his nap after lunch because the boat was rocking too much :)
The way we reset the lines last time. Another thing to revisit when the weather will step down. Steep learning curve, but this is part of the adventure...

7th night at sea and again this damn watch of 2-5am. Wind and seas at still strong, but as you cannot see a thing in the moonless night, this is up to your imagination to decide to be scared or not. Comparing to my previous similar experience solo in November, I am far less tired, an waaaaay more confident in the boat. Sounds almost like commute. This is still pretty hard on nerves, don't get me wrong. Gilles comments at the watch swap: "I feel broken , like inside a Washing machine". He has seen way worst but this kind of weather doesn't seem to get old. Anyway, I am tired enough I could sleep inside a roller coaster. In any case, there is no danger at all. This is just the Pacific reminding us of its roaring splendor when unleashed. It could be fun with a Kite though :)

• Day 7

Wind stepped down a bit and waves too. It looks more supportable. We are now comfortably settled in the trades. I should not say comfortably  because the sea are still quite big, but at this point we have to accept the fact that it might be like that all the way down. It is early in the season, and there is still surf in Hawaii as we speak. Today was all about little fixes. We had more issues with the Genoa yesterday and we reset it again when we took the storm jib out. We broke the small sea water pump of the sink, and did some fixes right away. After I cleaned the engine water pump filter, this super cheap filter started to leak too. Now, after checking the engine it seems we have a coolant leak. We will keep that for tomorrow. Same with sewing the Genoa, there is way too much wind to take it down now, and we can still use it  as a #1 reefed jib which is perfect for now. Except those small troubles, We are still flying at 7 or 8 knots toward Hawaii.

Certainly our best day since the start with 150nm covered in the perfect direction. Sign that the sea sickness is long gone, I took the time to make some previsional arrival. We should reach the half point in one day and half, this Friday 8 days after departure. I estimated 9 more days to reach Hawaii. Even if we go way faster with the Trades, they will shift East soon, and we cannot sail straight downwind. We will  then do 25% more way than needed in theory. In any case t we should make land around the 26th. All this assuming we don't have any major breakage, of course. But overall, I realized the boat was quite ready to go and behave really good. I am amazed of the performance of our never tired mechanical skipper. If something was to happen to put windvane we would be in an ocean of trouble to be forced to take the wheel for hours straight.

• Day 8

Right now, we cannot go lower than W. as we expect the wind to shift E in one day or two, we would aim South at that time with, maybe with a cap at SWS. Other option would be to go South now ( as we are higher than our best straight line) with a Cap S. only interest is if the wind are better few degrees South than few degrees north in a couple of days. (If there is a no wind zone ahead).

Today is pretty much a copy of yesterday, except the cloud cover is a little more sparse, and sometime we can get a ray of sun warm the boat. This morning was all about some maintenance fixes. Coolant leak, drain cockpit leak, water filter leak. They  all look good now. I might have screw the oil engine top off , and now we have an alarm when we run the engine. Great. Another trouble check and project for this afternoon or tomorrow. Not that we need the engine anytime soon anyway, still we need to fix that ASAP. Meaning after Gilles's nap. There are priorities and priorities :)

Going into the night, with the engine fixed, but we still have the coolant leak. We will assess tomorrow morning how much we are losing. You can replace coolant with fresh water, of which we still have plenty -we did not start on the second tank yet. Then this is more an annoyance than anything else. The other fixes look string for now. This is all temporary, the list of immediate fixes once in Maui is growing at light speed. We did not start working in the jib, there is still plenty of wind. We found what might be a cruising spinnaker which will be fun to try if we stop breaking everything. Sky has been cloudy and overcast all day. Still very chilly at night. Wind is relatively steady from the N-NE at 15 knots. Glad we are almost at half of the passage. 2 days we did not see a single cargo ship around. We are actually totally alone in the middle of the Pacific on a nutshell. Astonishing.

Thursday April 16

Wind map April 16 11pm HST, April 17 1am PST