TranspacBlogII-17: Pass on the left.

Friday, the 13th July.

I spend a lot of my workday in Los Angeles on the freeway. I know I've become a grump, but when I learned to drive, I learned that all slower traffic is supposed to stay to the right, and passing is to be done on the left. So why do all the SUV's sit in the left lane and go slow? Haven't they learned? Slower traffic to the right!!

Well we seem to be slow to learn to pass on the left as well. But first, some Milky Way.

After yesterday's meditation on beating to windward toward the stars, and our amazingly improved position in the fleet at role call, the southwesterly we had been beating into turned way north, and we set the spinnaker, the curvy cantankerous ballooning sail that festoons the sailing magazines. This sail is what we go on transpac for. In a normal transpac, we have been slamming into big waves for two days, and setting the spinnaker means no more spray, very little seasickness, and much warmer. Yesterday was crystal clear all day, not a cloud anywhere. Once the spinnaker went up, things got much warmer. Actually, with the wind as light as it was (5-8 knots), it was baking hot. The only crew out in this oven are those on watch.

We have five crew-members (more on each in the future). Only two are on watch at a time. The other three are free to do what they please. Jimmy Barber, Andrew Campbell, and I tend to sleep during our off watch. Jimmy and I and Steve Calhoun spend a lot of time looking at the weather reports. Steve also spends massive amounts of time tinkering with his boat. He is always fixing things, adjusting things, checking things; water maker, navigation gear, etc. Most boat owners, including me, like to do this in our spare time on our own boat.

Charlie Buckingham is a reader. He brought several books, and is devouring them. Jimmy is starting to read too.

I'm just a bit too nervous to do anything but figure out how to make this bucket move faster.

So we patted ourselves on the back for our improved fortunes and sailed the spinnaker along our track. At first the wind was very light, but gradually it increased. All night long, it slowly increased. It is early afternoon, as I write, and the wind is 12-14 knots, and we are scooting along at 6-7 knots, substantially faster than the first 4 days, which averaged about 4 knots.

So it is a slow race, as advertised.

So where does the freeway rant come into this blog?

Well, as you heard yesterday, we passed Farfar. On her left. Interestingly, she changed her course radically and ended up behind us on our left. Sound familiar? They were setting up to do to us what we had done to them the previous 24 hours. We knew this, we faded a little more to the left as we went down the course. But not enough. This morning there they were 5 miles due south of us. They passed us on the left. Again.

What is mystically eerie about this hypothesis, is that right after rounding Catalina Island, Farfar passed us not more than 1/2 mile away to the left. Within an hour we did the same thing. Pass to the left. Pass to the left.

Last night, Farfar converged on our course from the left, got a look at us this morning, and now have just veered to the left again, disappearing over the horizon at 153 degrees magnetic. I wouldn't be surprised if we see them again.

But not if we stay to the right. So, after much discussion, and hand-wringing, we have also shifted our sails and headed as far to the left as our spinnaker will let us. We are chasing Farfar, even though we are closer than she is to Hawaii.

Why are we sailing south, you might ask when Hawaii is to our west southwest?

Because that is where the wind is. This transpac will go down in history as the race that was started without a pacific high. The Pacific high usually sits well north and east of Hawaii, and it is the fulcrum around which the winds of the north pacific blow. They circulate around the high in a clockwise direction, down the right side, from east to west on the bottom, and from south to north on the west, etc. You can think of the high as a big plateau. It is the sides of this plateau that a sailor wants to head for.

But this year, there is no obvious plateau, but a rather amoeba-looking hill that is centered, precious few miles to the west of us. At the risk of a fatal metaphor mix, sailing onto that hill is like sailing off the edge of the earth. Several boats in our fleet (Brown Sugar, Xdream) have ignored the weathermen and sailed onto the amoeba. We are avoiding the amoeba like the plague (another mixed metaphor).

But for the last 24 hours, Farfar has avoided the amoeba even better than we have. That is why we are chasing them. This is a discouraging time. We really don't want this Cal 40 to the left of us.

So when, you might ask do we stop this nonsense and turn toward Hawaii? That is a very good question. When we find the south side of this amoeba, and turn gingerly around its pseudopodia and head for Waikiki

Fraught with uncertainty about the big picture, we are still sailing the small picture with conviction. We are keeping Psyche moving, no sheet is tied down for very long; we egg each other on to keep concentrating at the helm. As we converged on Farfar to our south this morning, we were beating her pretty handily. Then she veered south to get away.

So we definitely think we can beat her boat-for-boat with the spinnaker up.

If only we can remember to pass on the left.