Not too much activity to report from day 5, we are still heading NNE, and we've just crossed latitude 30 N. Wind speeds are up and down, light squalls in the night still, but less rain. Temperature is also dropping, so we are all starting to dig warmer clothes out of sea bags.

This morning I had a plate of lox and bagels in one hand, jumping to ease the mainsheet with the other hand as a squall jumped up the wind speed pouring water down the windward rail and into the cockpit. A slightly strange blend of civilization and wilderness.

Electrical charging seems to be working fine, so we are adhering to this 'if it isn't broke don't fix it' rule.

Julia and I share a night watch which is fun, we get to sail the boat as hard as we want, trimming and easing through the gusts, no doubt annoying the hell out of the off-watch. We each have about 10 hours of watches a day, meaning we hand steer the boat for 5 hours a day. Great practice, in the end we'll probably get the equivalent to a whole season's worth of beer can racing. At some point we'll have to do the downwind portion of this trip to round out our driving ability.

Exciting news, we just recovered a glass fishing float. It's green, about 16" in diameter. People say they were used as floats on Japanese fishing nets long ago, and they are definitely prized finds.

Lat 30 07.040' N, Long 149 52.714' W
Wind:16 kts
Seas: 1-2 meters E, & SE
Speed: 6 kts
Dist to go: 1437 NM

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If you have been following the satellite tracker you may have noticed that we are now heading a bit more North than our previous course. Last night we spoke on the SSB to Green Buffalo (Cal 40 also doing the return trip) who has something like 15 Pacific Cups/Returns (about 75k miles!) who recommended that we start making some Northing now, rather than have to fight it out later. This is also what Expedition has been telling us, but we've been ignoring it. A bit harder to ignore the voice of experience from Green Buffalo.

It's been an eventful 24 hours. Julia dove on the propeller to see if it had snagged some debris as it was making a strange noise. Swimming under a 42 foot sailboat, over a mile of water beneath, and 400+ miles from the nearest land...little spooky. We also changed jibs down to the 90% which is a smaller sail that handles the wind we are seeing much better. The boat is much easier to drive in this configuration (although some unnamed members of the crew seem to enjoy driving the boat like a submarine, through every wave rather than over). Also, we have been having some strangeness with our battery charging, which is very concerning as this is a potential 'turn-around' type problem. Luckily however Steve spent some time on the sat phone with his electrical guy, who made some suggestions involving tightening all connections, and so far so good today.

I think we were all a bit tired going into last night, from the squalls and rough going before, but last night we made great miles and the motion allowed for some good sleep. Today we see on the GPS that we have made good over 500 miles towards SF, about 1/4 of the way. Actual miles sailed are right at 555 NM.

Oh, and Julia made us apple pie for breakfast, in addition to all the other things she's been doing, meaning that she definitely is getting the most valuable crew award for today.

Lat 27 58.230' N, Long 151 14.158' W
Wind:15 kts E
Seas:1-2 meter E
Speed: 6.3kts
Dist to Go: 1554 NM

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We've had a good run over the last 24 hours, making good about 135 miles towards SF. We've only had to motor for an hour or so (which is good because we have been having some weirdness with our prop, possibly something on the shaft), mainly because we've been in what seems like a never ending series of squalls. If you've never experienced a squall before, basically they start late night, and bring an uptick in winds, sea state, and a huge amount of rain. Luckily for us, they also tend to lift us towards our destination (allowing us to sail more directly for SF).

Last night was a long night as we were launching off of the squall induced chop landing sometimes not-so-gracefully with a boat shuddering pound. These are also wet conditions, and I think we've all been getting some 'rain' over our berths. So, we are all definitely a bit more tired today, although spirits are high and we're looking forward to a fancy lunch from Julia using the Mahi Mahi we caught yesterday evening.

Steve's new saying is 'Those are my clean pants!" as he continually tries to change into clean dry clothes, only to end up soaked as water pours into the cockpit.

I had a great time in the middle of the night last night driving in 25kts of wind and rain listening to Jah Warrior Shelter Hi-Fi remix album on the iPod.

Lat 26 06.963'N, Long 153 19.8' W
Wind: 15kts E
Seas: 1-2 M E
Speed: 6kts
Dist to Go: 1708 NM

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Day 2 is drawing to a close, and we continue to romp along. Winds have remained fairly consistent, however we have had a few hours here and there of light winds primarily on the back side of squalls.

In the middle of the night I woke up to Coyote absolutely charging along, with Rick and Steve (both members of the San Francisco Singlehanded Sailing Society) driving us at a consistent 8 kts upwind through 20 kt rain squalls.

We've been lifted so we are now sailing direct for SF (in fact we are sailing for a point a bit south of SF at the moment). The general plan is still to stay on this tack for a week or so, and then flop over for a final tack into the bay. In a way, this is sort of a modified clipper ship route, staying South and East of the high. The routing software had a strange moment last night when it told us to turn around and sail SW for two days, only to then turn back around. Didn't seem like the best idea, so we held our course and with today's new GRIB (weather file) everything appears to be back to a more sane course.

Sailing with 5 people is great, so much rest, and it's nice to know that everyone on board is a good sailor and more than competent to deal with anything that might come up. John made us peaches, cream, and shortcake for breakfast. Not too shabby.

Lat 24 32.084' N, Long 155 12.353' W
Wind: 13 kts ESE
Seas: 1 meter E
Speed: 6.3kts
Dist to go: 1850 NM

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We are about 22 hours into our trip, and Coyote has been storming along in very nice conditions. Winds have been holding steady at about 13-17kts true and we have been making a course good of about 020 degrees. Coyote is a great boat for this type of sailing, quick upwind, very stable and solid, and easy to drive. In fact, we haven't yet turned the autopilot on for more than a few seconds at a time, as the boat is so easy and fun to drive. It's also amazing how much easier it is to do this with 5 people (as opposed to 2). It's nice to have someone else on watch with you, you get so much more sleep when off watch, and you know there are plenty of other good sailors to share the work if something needs doing.

Cabin interior is a bit warm and humid, as we took a few waves over the cabintop that found every possible means into the boat. I had one off watch in the early evening where I was woken up about three times by water dripping into my bunk, but Steve managed to plug the offending vent from above, and things are starting to dry out.

Expedition (routing software) has us taking a slightly unusual course. Instead of heading up and over or through the high, we will stay on our current course, close-hauled for about 6 more days, and then tack onto port tack to close with the coast. If winds are strong along the California coast we may need to ease off and head for the Santa Barbara area, but delivery North from there will be a simple and quick trip once the weather conditions are correct.

All in all we are having a good time, and finding it easy to settle into the rhythm of Coyote.

Lat 23 14.980' N, Long 156 53.203' W
Wind: 14kts ENE
Seas: 1 meter ENE
Speed: 6.1kts
DTG: 1969NM

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So, there's a republican, a Buddhist, and a kiwi on a boat in the
middle of the ocean and the republican says...

We'll have to let you know the punchline in a few weeks.

Julia and I are flying out to Hawaii tomorrow to take part in a delivery of the boat Coyote from Kaneohe Oahu to San Francisco. Coyote had a great race, taking a close 3rd in Division B of this year's Pacific Cup race. The skipper Steve Hill and the rest of the crew have a lot of great experience (including 4 combined trips between SF and Hawaii), and we're excited to take part in this trip which should be a great learning experience and adventure.

Plans are (weather permitting) to leave Hawaii on Monday July 26th. Time of the trip is highly weather dependent, but we would guess somewhere between 2 and 3 weeks. While we are underway there are a variety of options for you to keep track of us and keep in touch.

Satellite Tracker. Boats in the Pacific Cup carry a satellite transponder onboard that updates every hour, allowing you to follow us via the webpage and see our location, heading, speed, etc. Go to the website, and click on division B on the left side, and then click on Coyote to highlight us. We are about 90% sure this tracker will continue to be operative during the return delivery, but don't worry if it isn't, it's still a pretty experimental piece of technology. The website is: http://www.ionearth.com/2010/pacific-cup/ (Note: I have found that sometimes this website doesn't fully load and you have to keep reloading the page a time or two to get it to work, so you may encounter that problem as well).

Our Blog. We may be updating the blog while underway, not sure yet, it'll depend on our motivation and access to email airtime.

Coyote's Blog. Coyote also has a website and blog that I believe Steve will be updating occasionally. At the very least you can read the reports from their trip over: http://sailcoyote.com/

Well, Pisces is now home in her new slip here at Shilshole. We are on J-Dock, which Jason & Christy have assured us is where all the cool kids hang out, come by and say hello!

My cousin Peter has convinced us that Shilshole actually is named this because of shilshul (a uh...digestive ailment that visitors to Israel sometimes encounter).

We had a great sail today, averaging over 7 kts for about four hours wing-on-wing with current and about 15 kts of wind helping us along.

Now we need to buy a car, bikes, cell phones, insurance, and some clothes that don't look like they've been baked in the sun while being washed in salt water for the last two years.

Captain Julia (with help from the roving crew of Hello World) graciously took charge of unloading Pisces from YachtPath in Victoria, allowing me to stay an extra few days in SF to race onboard the Express 27 Peaches in the 2010 SF NOOD regatta (4th place). All was well with Pisces from her transit, in fact I ended up with more scrapes and bruises from the weekend of racing than she did on her 10 day trip North.


We spent a few days at the municipal marina in Victoria, right in front of the Empress Hotel and Parliamentary building, until we were more or less kicked out (in a very friendly Canadian way) because the docks were all full to capacity for Canada Day. We had a pretty straightforward motor-boat trip up to Bedwell Harbour in the Gulf Islands, with a bit of a reminder on why we need to pay attention to currents up here.


We spent several days at Bedwell Harbour, hiking and exploring in the dinghy, it's absolutely beautiful up here, and the lush forest is a nice change and counterpoint from the desert of Mexico. Also Canada apparently still has bald eagles, one of which we saw while we were enjoying a pint of local microbrew.


We would have loved to stay in the Gulf Islands for months, but we are trying to get back to Seattle within a week, so we decided to head into the San Juan Islands rather than further North. We had a great sail, got checked through U.S. Customs ("How do you know Julia?" "She's my wife." long pause "Oh."), and are now anchored at Friday Harbor.