Day 12 - Pressure Systems

Two reasons I slept most of Tuesday - first, I was becoming a grinch from lack of sleep. Second, and more importantly, we were coming up on a low pressure. After our accidental, but quite useful, run into the cold front a few nights ago - it just happened to be moving south faster than predicted (was over 100nm South of where it should have been so we had disregarded it) and we had to head North to keep on track - the winds put us right on the 030N line...along with a low pressure system. Lows are good and bad. Good winds, but the North West quadrant tends to be the roughest, and this one was already at developing gale force. I had spent two days rereading weather and on the sat phone with San Diego. For those who don't know: Lows make hurricanes (not very likely out here - nearly impossible), they rotate counter-clockwise in the Northern hemisphere, and they always tend to move South. This one spent 48 hours moving due West. Its projected path was West. Weirdest thing ever to me out here weather-wise. After 2 days of me scouring weather faxes, HF being too out of spectrum to download weather into our plotter, and sat phone liaising (?) with the San Diego area forcasters (thank you Lance!) we decided to hold course. Oh, and the always requisite review of Bruce and Coles, or now Coles (aka Heavy Weather Sailing). We could always drop South if need be. Among other things, I am the Navigator (as long as the Captain agrees) and the Weather guesser. Eight years of aviation weather overlapped by four with eight years of surface weather (12 years of weather) apparently makes me the expert out here. G-ma is nice as a back up now, but doesn't know the surface impact - just the air side and how to read the chart (always useful).

The men entered the low on their watch and saw steady upper twenties to thirty. I was thirty when we took over and slowly dropping. We entered in the north west quadrant. Never, never trust a weather guesser over a low lol But, it never got over the "developing" stage so we just crossed in a bit of an elongated u-shape with 3m swells. If you haven't been on a boat driving up a wave, then down the other side for more than a second, it takes some getting used to. I think my watch mate just hid in her bivy sack afraid they were going to eat us. She came out when we were running 8.5kts in 25kts of wind with following seas. Running, with the winds behind you, makes it very quiet. Following seas can either do something similar or rock you in every direction. I explained it was not the least dangerous situation to be in. Anyhow, we cleared the low and are now trying to sleep. Again.

Position at Writing: 30.48.538N 144.17.327W @0848 (clocks moved up one hour) 4.7.13