TranspacBlogII-11: Getting out of town.

Went body surfing the last 4 days in a row (this after a surfing hiatus of more than 2 weeks!) with my one true love.

Two things about that:
1) the south swell is gradually increasing, from the southern hemisphere.
2) the wind swell is decreasing to almost nothing.

We are so close that my surf-report web page, Wetsand is issuing their forecast for the wind on our start day and the next.

Oh, my does it look grim. Notice the swath of 100 miles of 4 knot winds. YUCH

But here's a reason for hope. 2 years ago the same 5-day prediction looked like this:

A little light till we passed Catalina, and then whoosh, away we'd fly in 28 knots of wind. This prediction became the laughing stock of our first 3 days. We never had more than 4 knots of wind and let the fleet eat up our excellent start for lack of a light-weather jib "drifter" (See transpac 05 blog for more).

The lesson we learned is that 5-day predictions are not very reliable. So here's hoping the converse reversal occurs this time, and we get the strong northwesterlies this race is famous for.

Here's the bigger picture of the California coast out maybe 800 miles. Both Monday's and Tuesday's predicted wind. Dark blue is ZERO fucking knots of wind. Light blue is 4 knots. Notice how far out from the coast these blue splotches extend. Yuchadoodle. If this prediction holds, it's going to be a very long trip.


So cross your fingers, campers. We need to turn this prediction around!