Wednesday, July 18, 2007

On Rails

This is what Stan Honey calls "slotcars". There is less wind to the north and the better wind to the south is too far away to make a detour worthwhile. So, the navigator has to posture about a bit before making his daily recommendation to just "Stay the course." (Since there is no other possibility.)

Today, Wednesday, 18 July 2007, our 0600 PDT position was, 23N37, 134W44. Course 250M and speed 7. It is overcast and damp. Wind is pretty light, but we keep moving. (Cirrus secret weapon.)

A 147 mile day yesterday and still 1280 to go to Makapu'u.

Lots of spinnaker action yesterday, but I'll leave the details to the Skipper's Blog.

If you check the chart it is almost impossible to find Cirrus in the mob of high performance bigger boats crowding around since we've been doing so well. We have seen quite a few zipping by off on the horizon. (Lindsey claims we held back to be polite.) Amazing how many friends you have when you're #1.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

sorry, I missed a day updating Cirrugator as I was travelling, but it is now back to the lastest stage.
Click on the routing picture for the lastest - looks pretty straight forward for Cirrus: another slow half day, and then decent wind until shortly before Hawaii (but that could change, to the better or worse). Some jibing will be needed (the "slotcars" situation, to which Bill eluted), but no painful decisions to take.
Look also at the fast boats, and how different the weather is now compared to the first days of Cirrus. 4 out of 5 go north, only Rosebud goes deep south. Look at the GRIB files in the full Cirrugator to see why this is a possible decision. Unfortunately, I don't have the polars of the fast boats, after all they are twice as fast as Cirrus, so running my router with them does not make sense. But for Cirrus the router today suggest (almost precisely) the actual course taken.