North Pacific High

Marcy is ghosting slowly north - instead of our usual winds of 15 to 25 kts, we experiencing the 2 to 10 knots typical of the "North Pacific High." Our plan, courtesy of Jimmy Cornell's excellent book "World Cruising Routes," was to head north from Hawaii until clear of the high, then angle northwest to Sitka. Unfortunately the high is huge right now and has enveloped our route. So progress is slow. It isn't all bad - the sky is sunny, the sunsets are gorgeous and the waves are small. We are passing thousands of beautiful jellyfish, Portuguese Men O' War, and have been visited by dolphins. Also we are lucky to be sailors from the Pacific Northwest where good ghosting skills are easy to aquire. About a dozen or so boats are heading back now to the mainland, on this route more or less, and some of them have resorted to motoring - at this latitude we're still concerned with heating up our cabin. Some sailors have a set speed to start motoring. Below that speed, say 3 knots, the motor comes on. On Marcy we usually will motor only if we can't maintain steerage or if the seas are too big to sail slowly. Much of this afternoon we were happy at a blistering 1.5 knots with the spinnaker.

Today is day 6 of the passage and so far we have been able to maintain an average speed of 5.9 knots. We have gone 865 nautical miles as of noon today and we have 1550 to go to our Sitka waypoint so we're about a third of the way there. Now that we are in lighter wind, all we can do is patiently plod on, hoping wind will fill in soon. Our average speed will drop, but life is comfortable and we will get there eventually!