Friday, July 30, 2010 | Author: Jacob
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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