Day 19 – A Personal Record – 11-9-24

Today was 19 days at sea for me.  This is now my longest passage in days.  The sail to the Marquesas was 18 days.  And this one is not over yet, it is looking like it will take 22 days.  Why longer this time? We are going mostly upwind and against the currents.  This makes our average speed much lower.  This was expected.  In my original passage plan I estimated this to take 25 days, or week more that the sail down.

Today was another beautiful sunny day, but not much wind.  The little wind we did get was coming directly from the north, which is where we need to be heading to get home.  Sail boats can’t go directly into the wind, so going north was not an option.  The highest we can point towards the wind is about 40 degrees to one side or the other. That meant if we sailed today, we would have been 40 degrees off course.  Not a good option when you are trying to get home. Plus the wind was so light we could only sail at 3 or 4 knots, so on came the engine.  Again.

I took some time to teach Luke and Mateo about upwind sailing and how to optimize our speed.  First they had to learn about vectors! If we try to go straight into the wind, our speed would be zero, we just can’t do that.  As we turn away for the wind, and the wind starts to fill our sails, we start to move.  The more we turn away from the wind, the faster the boat will go. Until we reach 90 degrees to the wind. Then we are going very fast, but make no progress towards our goal since we are now at right angles to our intended course.

So how to we figure out what is the best angle to sail to that provides us good speed and still keeps us moving upwind towards our goal? The number we look at is called Velocity Made Good (VMG), which is a calculation our instruments make to tell us how fast the boat is moving upwind, even though we are not pointed exactly in that direction.  I took out my pad of paper and demonstrated  some vectors and geometry on how this is calculated.  It is a bit sophisticated, but also a good lesson in math and navigation!

Sailing is a great way to see geometry in action. From general navigation to things like VMG.  It made Luke and Mateo wish they had paid more attention that 8^th grade geometry class.  Sailing would be an awesome way to get kids excited about what is an otherwise boring subject!

We enjoyed a beautiful sunset that filled the sky with orange and it kept us mesmerized for a good 30 minutes as we ate another dinner prepared by chef Luke.

We had a clam enough night that we watched another movie in the cockpit.  I think this is the 3^rd movie on this passage.  On the sail down to the Marquesas we never watched any movies.  That tells you how much smoother this passage has been. And this passage was supposed be rougher! So grateful it is not!

We will most likely continue to motor until tomorrow afternoon, when the wind is supposed to fill in from the northwest.  I hope so.  I appreciate the engine, but would much rather be sailing!