TranspacBlogII-19: depression

We are clinging to our third place in class, and our narrow lead over Farfar. Worrying about whether to sail even further south to cover Farfar, wondering if the rest of the fleet would just pass us by.

Suddenly things have gotten interesting.

We knew there was a bit more wind to the south. Today the weather maps showed that there was substantially more wind to the south. More specifically, there is a disturbance (is it a depression?). Actually, I don't even know if it rates as a disturbance. It's maximum predicted winds are 30 knots (well south of our course), but it's northern perimeter is reachable with some serious southerly sailing, so down we go.

We jibed over to port and headed south. We used the touted "two-pole jibe", which I won't bore you with. We had never tried it (any of us), and we weren't all that impressed about how much easier it was. So when the wind shifted again, we did the same one-pole jibe we had always done. We did it flawlessly, so we decided if the wind got too strong for that, we would do a "chicken jibe", take down the spinnaker on one side, then put it up on the other after changing course.

So we are determined to meet this depression as it arrives south of us in about 2 days. The wind predictions look like it will carry us like a surfboard for at least a couple of days. It is only moving at 5-10 knots, so we THINK we can meet it at the pass.

Gotta go sail.

See ya.