A productive, pleasant Sunday afternoon on deck, doing jobs I'd expected to have done before leaving. It was good to have been able to spend time feeling nicely relaxed as I worked on a fairly stable deck in sunshine - we were sailing fine, if a little slow in the lighter winds, soo the genoa pole could wait.
Looking through my fridge, I discovered two small steaks I'd forgotten about - still OK - so it was steak and onions for dinner - a fitting end to a very pleasant day!
The crescent moon is getting larger and higher around sunset now - just visible through some increasing cloud which made few stars visible.
Monday morning dawned grey with cloud everywhere. Wind N-NNW 10kt which became ~6 kt apparent since we're headed downwind. Definitely time to pole out the genoa which had been sounding very unhappy for a time and try to head more directly downwind and hence more S. Took a time to remind myself of the leads and car position needed but finally was able to take the genoa over to port on the pole - a nice stable arrangment for downwind sailing.
Or so I thought....! As I was writing this, on coming back down below, I saw we were suddenly making a better speed - over 5kt - and realised the wind had gusted up to ~15kt. I was just beginning to think I should pehaps reef down a touch, with Fred clearly getting overpowered, when the main was backed... We ended up 'in irons' and it took me some time to get us out of that mess - no engine allowed to help, of course!! It didn't help that a line was caught and kept the boom pinned... just to make sure things weren't as simple to sort out as they should have been. So now we're on starboard tack for the time being - the wind hasn't quite veered solidly past due N yet and we're making a good southerly course, Hopefully, the grey clouds all around won't hide another big one with wind under it to give another surprise too soon.... I'm finally getting a drink and my breakfast and it's gone 11 o'clock!
Much as I love Mexico, we're getting too close for comfort, with tropical storms heading NW up its coast from the Tehuantepec quite often and always the chance of one developing into a hurricane - I wouldn't enjoy being in the direct path of one as it headed my way!! Already had two friends giving me a 'heads up' of that possibly happening this week although I was relieved to see the latest forecasts show the storm abating quickly and not posing us a threat. I hope that's right!
1200 PDT - end of Day12. We made just 96 n.ml. (DMG) over the 24 hr period since yesterday - slowing down more. Gybing doesn't help the DMG ('distance made good') calculation because it's the straight line distance from yesterday's midday position to today's, never mind how many tacks or gybes we make, or how wiggly our path, in the meantime.
Position & weather report posted to Winlink.org and Shiptrak.org (using my US callsign of kc2iov) not long after midday PDT (=1900 GMT):
TIME: 2018/10/15 19:00GMT LATITUDE: 30-51.06N LONGITUDE: 123-52.30W COURSE: 194T SPEED: 4.0kt WIND_SPEED: 8kt
WIND_DIR: N SWELL_DIR: NW SWELL_HT: 1.5m CLOUDS: 100% BARO: 1019.8 TREND: 1 AIR_TEMP: 20.0C SEA_TEMP: 23.0C
COMMENT: 400 ml W Bahia San Ramon - just N of Isla San Martin/San Quintin, Baja, Mexico
