July 17th, 15:00 pst – Time to crunch some weather

  1. We’re happy: we entered the ridge of high pressure that extends to the southwest of the Pacific High and we seem to have a good angle. For a few hours we had very little wind, did about 5 sail changes and now are settled into a 9 knot northwesterly. We’ve seen big right handers, all the way to 35 degrees, so we are happy to get away from this ridge of high pressure. The barometer is starting to come down. I think that we’re making the South work. What we thought would happen North happened and, for now, we are very happy where we are.
  2. This is now obviously not a record year for the Transpac race, but it is a great one. Our 312 nautical mile 24 hour run yesterday was close to the record of 340 miles. Not bad for our first full 24 hours of sailing together!
  3. Tropical depression Cosme is heading for Hawaii, but we figure that we’ll solve one problem at a time. We’re too far away for it to matter.