Nice day

Writing about 1am Wednesday morning. Yesterday was a nice day as we approached the high. The wind dropped and the squalls pretty much ended. From maybe 3am on Tuesday morning until about 5pm we sailed in 8-14kts of breeze on flat seas under sunny skies while making a steady 7-8kts over the ground, very pleasant.

In fact it was so nice Paul and I both took showers at the back of the cockpit, something we won't be able to do much longer. The water temperature has been slowing dropping, from 77-78 in Hawaii down to 75 tonight. But sometime in the next few days it will take a big drop. One of the forecasts shows it dropping to the mid 40's before rising later to the mid-50's. That is going to be a real shock. We were still barefoot in shorts and t-shirts today, but when the water drops below 50 we'll be bundled up in a big way.

Today we got a routing recommendation and forecast from Commander's Weather. Then we cross checked it with the routing module in MaxSea, our navigation software. The two routes were very similar and take us up to about 39N before turning directly to San Francisco which is at roughly 38N. We expect to be motoring for a couple of days, then emerge into a breeze from the north northeast, or preferably north northwest, with a southerly setting current. The slight additional distance higher than the latitude of San Francisco (we could go as high as 40N) will compensate for the southerly setting current and give us a more comfortable sailing angle in case the winds come more from the NNE.

Tonight the water is even flatter than when I went off watch at 9pm. A star / planet rose about 12:15am. It looked kind of reddish, and still does, so we were speculating it could be Mars, but we really have no idea. In any case it was bright enough and the water flat enough that it's reflection shimmered all the way to the horizon. Even now as it has risen about the horizon there is still a reflection on the water.