Kinetic Vic-Maui Report 07-06 Day 4

Kinetic friends:

Latitude 41-21N, longitude 131-38W.

We haven't been sending updates as frequently as usual as we have been busy onboard Kinetic. 

We had a good start to the race on Saturday morning, beat out of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, turned the corner at Cape Flattery that evening, and slipped down the coast with an asymmetric spinnaker in light wind overnight Saturday/Sunday.  As the wind speed built, we switched to a jib top reacher and full main, reaching in 15-30 knots for Sunday and Monday, and making better than 200 miles each day. 

Steering is challenging, especially on cloudy nights.  Everyone is taking their turn at the helm.  Some keep the boat upright better than others!  Top speeds only count if they are achieved with the boat going in the right direction.  There is a tie, currently, at 15.4 knots.  Overnight Monday, in the dark with strong breeze and a cross-sea, we throttled back to a reefed main and a blast reacher.  We gave up some speed to make it easier to steer.  We're back up to a full sail plan with the light this morning.   

Everyone is doing well and the fish aren't getting much food from us.  The teens are adapting to the onboard routine and duty roster.  We're all getting our rest, too, with the two teams rotating through a cycle of six hours on, six hours off during the day, and four hours on, four hours off, four hours on during the night.  Or, as Jeff put it, "eat, sleep, sail".  Food has been tasty and plentiful, the latter being quite important on a crew that includes four teenage boys.  The oven provided us with tossed lasagna for dinner during one rough patch.  Slippery!

We saw a series of very large spouts from whales in the distance. In the rough seas, we could not see the whales.  A few albatross have been seen soaring along the wave troughs near the boat.  Smaller seabirds are common, with one making many attempts to time a landing on our wildly oscillating masthead before giving up. 

Our tracking transponder blinks normally, but the position reports do not seem to be getting through.  We are participating in the fleet's daily roll call with position reports by SSB radio.  We do know where we are, all the time!  Presently, we are about 350 miles off the Northern California coast, with about 1765 miles to go to Maui.  The depth sounder recorded a minimum depth of 26 feet sometime last night, invoking the possibility in some minds of a close encounter of a cetacean nature.

Nicknames include Nodrog, Otto, Wiki, Wookie, Manana, Cafe Ole, Odd Job, Floyd and Grind!

Kinetic out.

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