VIVACE HAWAII - SITREP 2024-07-01 - EVENING WATCH REPORTING
CREW HIGHLIGHTS: Sailing! Food! Birds! Whales! Reportedly some pancakes at breakfast. Delicious avocado toast and tomato salad at lunch. Italian-style tilapia for dinner w/ potatoes. Kirill's hands must be missed at home. An albatross cruised by to check things out while setting the spinnaker. Craig and Kirill had close encounter with two huge whales close alongside. Several what we believe to be storm petrels have been seen flitting about.
CONDITIONS: Wind filled in over night and by morning making 8+ kts boat speed in 12-14kts. Sailed on broad reach putting in good miles right along the rhumb line. Set the new spinnaker for several hours making 9+ kts. Stronger winds gusting up to 20kts required hand steering to keep from rounding up, forced to shift gears and pull the spinnaker down around 18:00. Geared down further to settle things out while Kirill crafted delicious dinner. Night watch forecast for rolly beam seas and 20kts+ that have materialized. Tolerable but somewhat rough down below. Kirill hasn't launched out of the vberth bunk but the night is still young.
HOPES AND DREAMS: Weather models calling for clear skies tomorrow morning that may yield opportunities for celestial navigation practice with noon sun sight, possibly carrying on into evening for star sights. So far has lots of low overcast and/or fog. Lots of wind to carry us for a few days yet, route and performance seems to be hitting the right marks thus far although wind angles not quite as predicted.
GOINGS ON: Excited to have flown the spinnaker successfully, some minor notes include not trapping the tack line under the razor-sharp roller furling drum (chafed cover) and to mind the plastic "toilet bowl" snuffer ring when in the vicinity of your face. Diesel shut-off still showing minor leak across the hall when heeled over 20 degrees. Had hoped that would settle down after using up some fuel but no such luck. Helm seat came unstuck at one point - pin/plates were held on with tiny #0 Robertson fasteners - perhaps snuck on board by a Canadian engineer. Reattached without incident. Digital/smart/assisted weather routing getting dialled in on laptops and Furuno system. Adjusted calibration of boat speed sensor and tackled some problems with network card in the ship tracking data box. Ships log is detailing energy consumption/battery status to better judge generator runtime requirements.
Iain