TranspacBlogII-12: ghosting to Hawaii

Aaarghhhh.
No wind on the horizon.

Went to the Transpac Dinner tonight. Amazing dancers, but I hardly saw them. I had the distinct honor of sitting with Kurt Holland, who had just given an amazing weather briefing to the crews of the 70 sailboats heading to Honolulu over the next 6 days. Kurt's brilliance was matched by his brevity. No long-winded explanations of thermals, and lows and highs. But just a crystal clear discussion of our wind situation.

It sucks.

But our conversation over dinner was great. I learned about Omega blocks on the 500 millibar charts, about low pressures forming in Monterey, about verification of weather charts.

Tons of new information I had not heard before, splitting my poor brain even more than have my recent struggles with the arcane language of weather-map queries. In order to get a chart of the weather at sea, we have to send an email query (via our satellite telephone) to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the national weather people. The chart must be written in very precise language. One comma out of place and you get nothing. But if you do it right, you get back a series of weather charts that tells you volumes. In short, these charts tell you where the wind is likely to be strongest, and what direction it will be blowing. Critical information.

But the hard part is trying to decide where to point the boat.

Well, we don't have to worry TOO very much about that because with tomorrow's wind forecast we'll be lucky if we make 60 miles in our first 24 hours. That will put us in the outer channel islands.

With only 2165 miles to go. You do the math.

Bottom line, don't expect things to happen too fast on this transpac.