For the last 24hrs we've been weaving through squalls. The first night started well enough, but by 3am the squalls came in and the game was on. By mid-morning we had the staysail up as there was a lot of wind. Lying in my bunk at 2pm in the afternoon I awoke to see about 16kts and the boat felt very underpowered. While I debated getting up to drop the staysail, the wind rose from 16 to 30 and blew 25-30 for the next 45 minutes. So I decided we'd keep the staysail.
Before the trip from Tahiti to Hawaii, the staysail had only been out of the bag once, back in 2008 between Bermuda and the BVIs. Now it gets regular use. We're really not rigged for this north/south sailing. If this was a regular thing I'd have the staysail on a furler so that we could switch easily from the jib to the staysail as conditions warranted. But today it's a trip to the foredeck to drop and flake the staysail, then stow it in it's turtle (a zippered bag lashed to the deck). Running up and back to the foredeck is one thing on a fully crewed racing boat, but not so popular for a short handed cruising boat.
So we stuck with the staysail tonight and we've been underpowered most of the time. The squalls have not packed as much wind, only one has brought wind in the 25kt range. In between the squalls we've had 12-15kts. We would have been OK with the jib and would have had some nice sailing when instead we had to motor because we were just underpowered with the main double reefed plus the staysail. I'm writing about 1:30am and the squalls seem to have dissipated for now. I don't want to wake Paul, since sleep is more important than a couple of extra knots of speed, but maybe we'll drop the staysail at the watch change at 3am and put up the jib so we can sail faster and avoid motoring.
The moon made a brief appearance as it rose, then ducked behind the cloud cover and is not doing much to light up a very dark sky.
Update 8am: Wore foul weather pants for the first time since 2008. Staysail down. Speed up.
