VIVACE HAWAII - SITREP 2024-07-05 - EVENING WATCH REPORTING
CREW HIGHLIGHTS: The food! Kirill, Craig, and Rhys have been serving up gourmet meals at every turn. Never thought I would see a sous vide strapped to a pot perfectly cooking chicken breasts for a killer salad. Sardine melts on toast for breakfast? Oh My! Had a few close encounters with freighters out in the middle of nowhere. Hundreds of miles off shore and we come within 4 miles of these giant 800ft+ vessels. While sailing under spinnaker, which limits our maneuverability and is a lot of work to set up or take down, we did hail one that was particularly close and ask them to slightly change course to pass behind us which they graciously agreed. First time for the crew using the VHF radio's DSC call capability to hail that vessel specifically.
CONDITIONS: Wind has been 15-20kts all day on the starboard quarter with a settled 3-4 sea state. Not a single tack or gybe. While unsurprising given the vast open ocean it's a remarkable difference from coastal sailing where you're constantly having to tack and avoid land hazards. We've made great strides, looks like another 160+ nautical mile day will be in the books when Craig tallies it up at 03:00 while thinking about breakfast.
HOPES AND DREAMS: About 36 hours ago we made a routing decision based on the developing wind/weather forecast models and departed our rhumb line course to instead pick a way through the uncommonly shifty low-pressure conditions that now separate us from Hawaii. Rather than long tacks on a constant heading, we have a carefully calculated route to minimize our travel time while optimizing and balancing factors such as speed, sailing angles, wave heights, and if there's no wind, motoring range. Through practice and experience we're learning how this particular boat sails at given wind angles and strengths, now it's time to put that to the test and follow a specific maze-like course through the shifting conditions.
GOINGS ON: While frequently frustrated by the persistent overcast conditions, we've all been enjoying developing our celestial navigation skills with Kirill's knowledgable tutelage. It's rewarding to learn how to tune and use a sextant to measure, more accurately for some than others, elevation of sun and stars over the horizon, and then apply reasonably simple maths and paper plotting to derive our latitude and longitude. Impressive performance and accuracy from a basic plastic tool that was standard issue for all WWII lifeboats. Maybe tomorrow my plot will put us in the ocean somewhere... Iain
(We are slowly approaching the first tricky part of the routing Navigation at sea is different than inland or on the coast because rather than negotiating rocks and the hazards of land you have to navigate the weather. Surprising as it seems the wind and waves are moving all different directions at different times. Pressure changes and move causing winds to change strength and direction. Fortunately, we have amazingly powerful technology that helps us predict these winds so that we can stay in wind of favorable strength and direction at the same time head towards more of the same. Every day we download weather charts for the coming days called GRIB files. These gribs combined with data about our Boat’s sailing angles and performance allow us to plot the fastest and most comfortable route to our destination. This is called Weather routing and Iain has been in charge of gathering this data and looking ahead to help us discuss what we hope is the best route involving the least motoring or uncomfortable sailing. We have some motoring coming us and some upwind sailing in 20 + knots so we are enjoying the tapering winds and calm for now. These are predictions and fallible but other than slight wind angle discrepancy’s and strength they have been right on. The “polars” or the boats performance data has been the most challenging part of this work because the polars we have for this boat seem to suggest we should be sailing faster most of the time which means it point us to places that we can’t reach in time and out here the right place at the wrong time is not the right place at all. This and the fact that we have new sails aboard that allow us to perform better than the “out of the box” Amel 55 is proving us with a great challenge. We are having to tune the polars to our crews ability’s and our particular quiver of sails. Soon we will get to try out the “Code Zero” a sail that is a mixture of a spinnaker and a Genoa and should help us get through the light stuff ahead.
Rhys