Long Pac Random Photos

The good news on a East-West course is that we can just pivot our solar panel to take advantage of maximum sun (especially when it is NOT sunny...) - there always was enough power throughout the day to recharge the batteries and we did not use our autopilot (not yet recalibrated after the Pac Cup mishap on the sensor so not ready to use)
This is our sole source of power (we have a spare panel just in case there's a problem with this one. We did hit some weird reading with our smaller battery (we have enough power for nav lights and instruments for the entire night on one battery so it wasn't a problem for us, that's why we have redundancy for this kind of trip) so I will look into this. If both batteries work great, we can also do a lot more cabin lights, GPS on all the time, etc...otherwise, we just need to be a bit more thrifty in our use of power devices.

You can also see a heaving line hanging off the stern lifeline. Not a requirement for this race, but something that I have find particularly useful, actually, in light winds!

Hollywood star - Heather.


Look, a whale!!!!

We actually saw whales (or heard) four times

1. I see something big in the distance, going North to South and spitting water...
2. We have a whale (and baby whale following in its wake) about a boat length away, traveling South to North. We could have touched the whale with the boat hook. We were close enough to count the barnicles on its skin (which looked rock hard). The whale was pretty oblivious of our presence but we turned away from it to make sure that there was not accidental hitting, especially given my relationship with sea mammals.
3. For two entire night watches (with NO wind, so we were not going anywhere), we heard a whale breathe right next to the boat. We think it was asleep as it wasn't moving either obviously. We kept hearing this at the same place. We tried to use our spot light to locate it but we couldn't easily find it on the water. Sound carries very well over water so it may have been out of the range of the spot light.
4. Coming back and as we were getting about to reach the Farallon Islands, a whale traveling west with a big spout!
   

'Nat, can you pop your head out?'
Nat (in the process of changing, thus not very dressed) pops her head out to realize that Heather was arming a camera...

This is the new system that we have put in place to cleat the
Sunblock (not super useful during this trip), winch handle and drying goretex sock...

Competition. We couldn't tell who that was. We think it was Taz!

Breakfast time: cooler box with on-deck food ready for the driver. Cups, powdered milk, bran muffins (ready to be spooned out after a couple of days), coffee (you can see the press) and oatmeals with blueberries and strawberries. On a chicks' boat with no wind, we eat WELL.

The gas tank was just put outside because it was find to be leaking inside the bilge. We waited until we couldn't smell any more gas fume inside to use the stove again. So much for the advertised 'no spill' technology on these guys...