Update from The Captain. Received via text at 9:48am Monday June 20th.
Day four? Sunday
Beautiful day on the water. Now that we are heading with a VMG of 100% to a waypoint to the West of Bella Bella. We took a long tack offshore last night as our water blast system is too unwieldy to short tack with. We saw wind from 14 to 18 knots and tucked in a reef with the last of the light. With a crew of four and a head sail powered boat that requires frequent sail changes when the wind changes as much as we were yesterday going in and out through the wind gradient of 20 to less than 10knts.
Last night’s long tack paid off and we found ourselves entering Cook Channel at noon just as the wind died. The closest we had been to land in a bit, the novelty almost made up for the frustration of little or no wind and adverse current that forced us to peddle for a while. Eventually the wind started to fill from the west and we got the spinnaker up. The confused wave form the chop made it very hard to keep fill and the slatting to the mainsail is enough to drive anyone crazy. I remember once when we did the OR offshore in my Moore 24 Josiah almost lost it in similar conditions and needed a time out. He was sleeping at this point. After taking turns doing a little motor sailing, Odin and I got the boat to some northerly pressure and the boat started making wake. By the time the watch changed, we were making 6.5 knots reaching with the kite.
Day 5 Monday
We are seeing now what has been slowing the inside competition down
Top speed last night was 10.4 knots under spinnaker and it was a little squirrely coming up Queen Charlotte Sound to Milbanke Sound, we had made the call to approach Bella Bella; our only checkpoint via sea forth channel. Very glad to learn of our second place position so far from the support boat in a brief interview across the water. “What was the worst part?” was the first question. Marty said last night what was the best part. Last night. Speaking of far: it’s still a long way yet. Almost 20miles as the sober crow flies.
Peddling into Bella Bella checkpoint all smiles despite missing a meal to do it.
This is the fun Martin was talking about at 2am. I can tell you that it was not fun being off watch for three hours on our ear as close to rounding up as the fun having crew could hold it.
Satellite phone issues meant using precious bars to download these low-res gribs. Other things came in too.
