[This message forwarded from their sailmail status report.]

Day 7 - Maine Passage

(Hello from the North Atlantic, at 41*38'N, 68*49'W, enroute to
Portland, ME after transiting Cape Cod's Boston and
Nantucket-Ambrose channels' intersection...

The night promises propitious travel, even if we have to tack.
As I got very little sleep in the last 24 hours, having stood
the watch until 6 and then immediately getting up to deal with
the squall, I'm off to bed and Lydia will stand the first watch.

Before I go, I set the direction to a point beyond the turning
radius of the Boston and Nantucket-Ambrose channels. Based on
our speed and direction, we should have arrived there right at
false dawn on Monday. From there, we'll go as directly as
possible to Portland. It's a beam reach for Lydia on the entire
trip, and as forecast above, it was marvelous. She made 8 knots
for most of it, and as a result arrived in the circle almost at
midnight.

Along the way, every star and planet (and satellites and
shooting stars, too) was out, and the Milky Way lit up the night
sky. I slept soundly for the longest continuous period on this
passage, nearly 6 hours. Lydia came to fetch me just before 2
AM due to the heavy traffic levels she was seeing, wanting
another pair of eyes for security. The radar screen was pretty
busy, and as we don't have AIS, we had no means of direct
identification of the hits we were seeing.

However, we passed through that area uneventfully, and as Lydia
went down for her sleep and I took over, I pointed Flying Pig as
close to the wind as possible from the beam reach we've been on.
Chris, our weather guru, had suggested remaining as close-hauled
as possible due to forecasted wind changes, and those are
already in effect, making our point of sail a beat. The weather
and water are great however, so the "beat" label makes it sound
worse than it really is.

Despite our being 30 degrees on the apparent wind, of which
there are 10-15 knots, Flying Pig stands up and marches forward.
It's marvelous sailing; while the waves are about 3-5 or maybe
4-6 feet, they're long- period (period being the time between
crests),and a very gentle ride up and down the swells as we beat
our way north (well, technically, northwest, slightly better
than we'd need to maintain to get directly to Portland).

We have an interesting current here...

Of course, I don't have access to the charts on the links I gave
you in the beginning, so I can't see what's happening. In
general, the area seems to usually have either strong inflow or
outflow to/from Portland. At the moment, we're being set fairly
strongly in the direction we want to go, but also experiencing
some drift which cuts our ground speed by about a knot under our
water speed. What Neptune and Aeolus give, they also take away,
so the net effect is that we're pretty much on target for
Portland, just not as fast as we might otherwise be traveling.

Naturally, things change, but if conditions were to remain the
same (no better, no worse, no tacking), we'd arrive in the
Portland about mid-morning on Tuesday. Even if it took another
entire day, this will have been a most memorable passage,
exceeding even our most optimistic projections...

Sunrise takes a long time at these latitudes, and is
spectacular. From last night's indications, today will be
brilliantly clear - and, certainly, the barometer's risen
notably since the last time we noticed it. As far East,
relatively speaking as we are, the sun comes up very early, even
this far into summer. The tradeoff is that, this high in
latitude can mean some very long periods of sunshine, but the
changes in that time length are much more accelerated than when
we're far south of here, so, while I've not looked it up, I
don't expect a significantly longer day than we've had, say, a
month ago, in Florida. It just starts a lot earlier, and is a
great deal more comfortable.

That said, we're already seeing the differences. The water and
air temperatures here are radically different than in Florida.
Our refrigeration which, for reasons I've yet to identify, has
been unhappy since Flying Pig went back in the water. However,
with water temperatures near 50, and air temperatures falling
under 70 at night, and sometimes during the day, the system is
finally getting to its design temperatures in both the
refrigerator and freezer (they've not come close in month we've
been afloat). That should help with the electric bill, so to
speak.

On that subject, with all the wind we've had lately, KissyFace
(the KISS wind generator) has had a field day, particularly
yesterday, during the storms, doing yeoman duty in refilling our
batteries, assisted ably - when the sun's out! - by the solar
panels. We designed the system for the tropics, where there's a
much more reliable breeze, and the sun's higher in the sky.
Indications remain that we'll do fine when we finally get there.

With the great weather we've had for cruising, the expected
doldrums have never arrived, and so there's some deferred
maintenance or passage repairs I have to do. The freezer door
latch had a mechanical failure which will involve some epoxy to
repair; I'll do that when I'm defrosting it, which will have to
be soon. I also have to go up the mast, a chore made more
pleasant when the mast isn't moving violently as can be the case
at sea, to attend to a couple of mysteries there. On the
subject of the mast, while the collar and boot, which keep it in
place and from leaking below, are successfully resolved, I still
need to fiddle with the standing rigging (the wires which keep
the mast straight), as they're still not right from when I
started in on them. So, it looks like at least some of the time
in Portland will be spent in passage repairs.

Actually, I'm very pleased, as virtually any long passage of
which I've read, even in brand new boats, have had numerous,
sometimes very serious, equipment failures and problems. I'd
consider ours very minor in comparison, for which I'm not only
very grateful, but impressed with our old gal (she turned 30
this year) and in our refit efforts, as they've proven out
pretty well.

The day (as in, post-dawn) started very well, with good boat
speed and even better direction. We had visions of arriving in
Portland tomorrow morning. Best not to think of those things
when Neptune and Aeolus are listening, however, as a couple of
hours in, despite the cheery voice of NOAA radio telling us that
the wind was from the west, it not only had been in the North of
West, but it came around to due north, just as Chris had said it
would. That, of course, led us away from the lovely line we'd
been tracing, and off into the briny.

Then, it diminished, as it continued to clock around through the
North, and we soon were not only going away from where we wanted
to be, we were rocking and rolling and the sails were crashing
as they emptied and filled with every roll.

So, we struck the sails, and tended to boat chores, relaxed, had
a snack, and otherwise chilled out. Well, that's a figure of
speech, as it was really quite pleasant, the 30 degree rolls
aside. Usually, if there's no wind, there's also no waves, but
such was not the case here, much to our disappointment, as it
meant that I couldn't do my up- the-mast chores which need
attention.

It also means that we currently don't know when we might get
there, as NOAA's altogether wrong (if their current forecast
were right, we'd have had a great beam reach all the way there,
and would arrive early tomorrow morning) about the realities out
here. If this continues, we'll not be under way, in any
direction, for a long time. If the small breath of air which is
present merely builds, we'll have to tack it in, because it's
directly on a line with where we're going.

Tacking, of course, is a very effective way of getting upwind,
but it takes about double or more the time it would have in a
direct route. Of course, we're only griping about the current
realities, as up until now, our little heave-to vacation
yesterday aside, we've had a totally direct route, and with a
tiny exception, all on one tack, even. The sails have only been
down a couple of times in the entire trip.

So, this is more the reality we expected - the waves to go with
the calm not included, but the delays, certainly - and in the
end, we've still got an amazing trip under our belts, and
assuming the doldrums here don't last a week, will still have
what we'd call a very speedy voyage.

So, we leave you, nearly becalmed, waving our mast in your
general direction. Perhaps tomorrow's report will include our
arrival, but for sure, we're enjoying it. Oh, ya, for those of
you watching SPOT in real time, this was why we weren't moving -
or, depending on the scale you applied, were moving slowly in
the opposite direction from which we'd just come. No problems,
Mon :{))


L8R

Skip, Lydia, and Portia, the sea cat

Morgan 461 #2 SV Flying Pig KI4MPC See our galleries at
www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery ! Follow us at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheFlyingPigLog and/or
http://groups.google.com/group/flyingpiglog

"You are never given a wish without also being given the power
to make it come true. You may have to work for it however."
(and)
"There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in
its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts."