Our visions, well a lot of peoples visions, of sailing West across the Pacific is one of following the Trade Winds, gentle off the wind sailing for days on end.
Sowhy are we sailing upwind?
Last night the wind shifted more South, and more West. Right now it is blowing from a direction of about 180 – 195, or South to South Southwest (SSW). We are trying to carry a course of around 235 to fetch the Galapagos. The ocean currents are mostly sweeping us North to the tune of about a 10 degree shift in our course.
If we were racing Evenstar with the boat trimmed to our most maximum aggressive pointing upwind we could sail around 45 degrees off the wind. This is no way to live, however. Sailed like that the boat is heeled over quite a bit. Simple tasks like relieving yourself in the head become a challenge, some tasks like cooking can become quite dangerous. Additionally the autopilot is REALLY horrible at sailing the boat tight to the wind, to really make your best upwind progress you need to hand steer the boat to the breeze. This is exhausting after a while and quite difficult at night when you cant see the sails and their tell-tales so well.
So to live on a boat for 6-7 days on a passage like this you try to crack off a little from tight upwind sailing. You sail a few degrees off the best upwind the boat can do but you end up sailing flatter and you can leave the autopilot on.
What this means for us is that we cant really hold the course we want to steer to sail straight at the Galapagos. Sailing the direction we are now we will pass well North of the Archipelago. So we are pressing on under sailing hoping that either the wind will shift in the next few days, or planning to have to tack at some point and sail some more South in order not to miss the islands.
Now, about that whole Trade Winds thingyes, in theory they are there. But they tend to be away from the equator. Were less than four degrees North of the Eqautor now, and the winds arent as predictable.
Looking at the (hopefully) attached image you will see a small section of what is called a Pilot Chart. These roses represent the cumulative observations of hundreds of boats over centuries of sailingmostly counting how many times each condition is observed in each month of the year. The major rose that concerns us is the one that shows a 42 in the middle of the arrow from the South, with a 32 in the arrow from the Southeast. This indicates that in April, roughly 42% of the time the wind is from the South with an average speed of around 15 knots. Hmph. The green lines are indicative of major ocean currents.
So the largest chance of wind we might see is sort of exactly what we are seeing Southerly winds about 15 knots with ocean currents that push you more North. Cest la vie I suppose, it could be a lot less comfortable and we could have that 2% of the time when there isnt a whisper of wind.
By the way we did see more dolphins today too.
Dinner is almost ready (chicken and rice, tomato salad and home baked bread) so I need to wrap this up and try to post it.
These winds are workable, if they hold it looks like we will be in before the week ends.
