Sunday 22nd July 2012 (Day 10)
A day of mixed sunshine and cloud - but no rain.. Quite a lot of sunny skies, interspersed with extensive overcast - which this morning led to the wind almost disappearing, only to come back again nicely once the cloud cover had moved away.
Pair of storm petrels have been seen regularly - they seem to have adopted us! There was a twittering noise after sunset , as dusk fell, as they fluttered around on fast-beating wings...
I caught sight of something leaping out of the water this afternoon - a dolphin! I rushed up on deck to see lots of them headed this way, many leaping up into the air - several played around our bow for a time, before they all made off..... Always such a pleasure to see them...
11pm Just downloading some more weatherfaxes and a satpic - showing just light cloud cover over Vancouver Island and the Pacific NW of the US..... so hopefully, they're getting some summer weather there at last!
I've just been up on deck in the dark to trim the sails - makes all the difference to our speed, of course, when they're trimmed correctly. The wind is slowly veering as I sail around the N.Pacific High, so I need to trim quite often .
We've made good progress - DMG today was 156 n.ml.- but we're definitely slowing down now and expect light winds for quite a time - possibly all the way to the coast. I'd been following the Great Circle route to Cape Flattery since yesterday, when the wind veered to SE, but decided this evening to do a 'jiggle' more to the NE for a bit to avoid getting too close to the High's centre over the next couple of days or so, in the hope of keeping some wind, rather than very little!