Sunday, July 17, 2011

Day Four: No Squalls So Far!

Yesterday morning we had a line of dark squalls bearing down on us that looked pretty mean. Ruthie turned off the autopilot and using the radar as a guide, expertly hand-steered Rutea through a narrow slot between two huge cells. It still rained like hell and the wind was up to 30 knots but at least we cleared the really rough stuff. The day mellowed out after that and even though it remained pretty lumpy, we made good time covering over 160 miles in a twenty-four hour period.
The evening was clear with only a few clouds (unusual!) and we kept the genoa out on the pole. By 0400 the wind had backed so Ruthie and I dropped the pole - we didn't even need to turn on the deck lights the moon was so bright. Since I was unable to sleep (not unusual!), I finished up Ruthie's watch.
The wind had gotten lighter by mid-morning so we put up the asymmetrical spinnaker but it didn't increase our speed by as much as I had hoped. Reluctantly, we stowed it just a few minutes ago and put the engine on because we want to make the pass at Suwarrow during daylight. We should arrive there tomorrow at about this time.
We've crossed into yet another time zone - we're now four hours ahead of San Diego and 3,744 miles away.
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At 7/17/2011 11:01 PM (utc) Rutea's position was 14°05.16'S 160°18.71'W
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