Wednesday 24th October (Day 3)
A lovely sunny start to the day with light cloud forming later, a pleasant SE wind and a slight Pacific swell. We had one squall from a black raincloud ovenight, but pleasant conditions otherwise.
I chatted to Barbara(VE7KLU) and Bill (VA7WSM) at 7.40am - just before the Gt Northern Boaters Net started up at 8am - and Bill sorted out a problem with my mike: over-driving it, he diagnosed - so I finally held it 6 inches (15cm) away from my mouth and the 'clipping' of my words vanished - excellent!
I went back to my bunk to catch up on lost sleep - and woke up later feeling very refreshed after a deep sleep... Fred, the Hydrovane, had been well in control in the meantime, but the wind had slowly veered to the SSW so it was time to tack around - heading WNW was not a good idea!
Since tacking, we've been heading roughly SE, but being 150 ml W of Crescent City (WA) initially we were well off the coast. I'm happy to amble along though, since I don't want to get too close inshore.
Pacific Seafarers Net was my next appointment , as I was enjoying the last of my hot stew at 8.30pm PDT (0330 GMT). It's on14300kHz & will be a daily check-in for several months. It was good to hear famliar voices & get a '73' from ham friend John, VK4DBJ, in Australia, who I could just copy well enough.
Near evening, occasional squally grey clouds arrived with long gusts building to 28 knots, then very heavy rain, followed by wind dropping to just 6-8 knots ... We heeled somewhat but survived OK!
Tonight, we're making only around 3.5 knots in wind of 8 knots from SSW. No problem to my mind going so slowly since we're now being forced nearly East and we're 120ml off the coast. Tomorrow night, a front is expected and with it a change of wind giving us the chance eventually to head S again.
I've had a lot of emails to keep me busy over the day after checking on deck - several things there needed dealing with, including tensioning the stays'l halyard and trying to tension the stays'l leech line - in strong wind, the leech keeps fluttering like mad - a highly annoying noise and not good for the sail...
DMG was 80 n.ml over 24hr to 2300GMT (150 ml to J. de Fuca entrance) - tacking doesn't help make for a good DMG!
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Tracking 'Nereida'
Apart from my own daily position/weather report to Winlink/Shiptrak/Yotreps, accessed via my website's 'Travels' page link ("Where is 'Nereida'? etc), there are two sources of automatic tracking:
Using my AIS signal: http://www.exactearth.com/media-centre/recent-ship-tracks/tracking-nereida/
Using a GPS transmitter: http://oceantracker.net?event=nereida
