a thousand miles from nowhere

Seeker was today about a thousand miles from any point of land, actually 900 miles from an island in the aleutians. Even though it's 300 miles farther to cape flattery, I think we'll head east. Decent breeze (relatively speaking) today and more on the way tomorrow. hopefully not to much.

40°50.2'N
151°41.4'W

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Two Ships

Seeker saw two ships this morning. There was a little breeze for a while. Then there wasn't. Now there is again. Tomorrow there will be more, if the forecasters have any idea what's going on.

39°31.0'N
153°11.4'W

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a little wind

Today was not so bad for wind, we had a few knots for most of the day, which then died out right before sunset, so we have the motor on again for now. The most recent forecasts are more promising, however, so we may be in the westerlies before too long. We'll see.

Seeker Out
38°23.6'N
154°16.0'W

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Still becalmed

The high is still parked right on us, motored for a good part of the day.

26°53.6'N
155°04.1'W

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Under Pressure

Seeker motored most of the day today in light and shifty winds, as the north pacific high shifted basically directly on top of us. Saw a shoal of dolphins and a bit of junk floating about and a couple flying fish. still no sign of the great north pacific island of plastic, however, and we should be pretty close to where it would be.

Seeker out

35°16.6'N
155°43.1'W

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not done with the North Pacific High yet...

Seeker was plagued with light headwinds again today, eventually becoming light and variable enough that we switched on the motor and motored north for about 3 hrs. We then picked up some light but favourable breeze from the northwest, and went back to being a sailboat.

Also, while motoring, we saw some large debris in the water ahead, and upon approaching, what appeared to be a round bouy and a mooring bouy turned out to be a round bouy and an albatross sitting on the water, which proceeded to unfold its great wings and soar off in the trough of a wave.

Seeker out

34°00.0'N
156°20.0'W

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More Mahimahi

We caught another mahimahi today and had half for dinner, the other half is waiting for tomorrow in the fridge. We have plenty of food, so we're probably not going to be doing any more fishing for a while, unless we sail through a school of tuna.

Last evening we sailed into a ridge of high pressure, which left us with glorious cloudless night watches, then we hoisted the iron spinnaker to try to pick up a front that was going to pass to the north of us. The morning was still clear, so we shut down the boat for a brief swim, then motored for another couple hours before we started to get weak but steady southwesterlies. Now we're cruising along with 11 kts from the WSW, making decent time toward home!

Seeker Out
33°15.4'N
157°51.1'W

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ridges

The thing about crossing an ocean is, if you've got wind, you've got clouds. But every once in a while you have to cross a ridge or skirt a high pressure center, which you pay for through a shortage of wind, but at night you reap the rewards! New Moon to boot! It's just too bad that the next big meteor shower is not for about 10 days.

As I said, right now we're crossing a ridge between the two dominant high pressure centers, trying to get across in time to pick up a front that a low will be swinging by here tomorrow or tomorrow evening. We'll see if we can pull it off. If we can it will significantly help our ETA.

Seeker Out
32°03.4'N
158°56.1'W

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Where are we now?

It has come to my attention that to many of you the latitude and longitude given at the end of each post is probably fairly meaningless... to give meaning to these numbers, I would recommend downloading Google Earth for free from the Google Applications website. I think if you google "google earth" you probably can't miss it. then simply copy and past the lat & lon to the search field in Google Earth, and it should make a little mark at our position. You might also be able to do this without downloading anything with google maps or whatever online mapping tool you like to use, but I can't guarantee it will work, or if it does, you probably won't be able to save any kind of track. Good luck!

Seeker Out
31°44.4'N
158°50.3'W

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How going oceanbashingwise?

A big squall today kicked up some nasty cross-seas, there were easily identifiable wave trains from the NE (wind direction) as well as N, E, NW, SE, and S. If you looked hard enough you probably could have spotted waves from the south and southwest also. Combined with the wind direction backing, it made for slow, rough progress today, but progress nonetheless. And the cool, cloudy weather did help make it a little more bearable below, probably worth the tradeoff of not being able to stand.

Seeker Out

29°53.5'N
158°35.4'W

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