Monday, July 6th 2015
Luna Quest
W. Eric Faber
Mon 6 Jul 2015 00:35
Daily run: 115 measured miles
The wind was forecast to be a moderate breeze today, but instead it is strong, up to near gale force, making the seas very rough with large breakers. All the windows and hatches are closed, but perversely, inside the boat it feels calm, save for the occasional rogue wave that may roll us ignominiously. Then everything that is not secured will be on the move. The rough weather is making the task of navigation quite exhausting. Planning to arrive Tuesday morning has me up and down the companion way like a yoyo adjusting the sails and the Hydrovane to keep us at the correct speed and direction. The solar panels and the wind generator have not been able to feed enough energy into the batteries for overnight power consumption, so that this morning we have had to run the Honda generator for an hour for just an extra 7% of juice; it spluttered several times and then just stopped after half an hour. We managed to get it going again, but it clearly does not like the motion of the boat.
We are attributing the poor weather that we have been experiencing in the western part of the Pacific Ocean to the El Nino effect. The typhoon from last week that looked so threatening was quite out of season. We can only hope that not more of these aberrations will threaten our progress.
Eric