Slowly, very slowly

The forecast as shown in the GRIBs, and our reality, continue to have little in common. It's been winter on New Morning with overcast skies heavy with rain clouds and cold at night.

Last night was another night of squalls. One particularly nasty one hit 27kts before I finally rolled up the jib and started fore reaching to calm things down. It continued with 23-25 for another half hour. I waited out the next two squalls going very slowly while they hit us with 20-25kts from the ESE. Better to slowly sail towards California than quickly sail towards Ecuador. Then the sky opened up and the stars came out, but it blew a steady 20kts from the ESE. All the while the GRIBs were forecasting 10kts from the NE.

The squalls continue this morning, but without as much vigor. None the less they cause 40-60 degree shifts in the wind. It's been impossible to tell where the real gradient wind actually is because the wind seems to always be a function of the nearest squall. As soon as one has passed, another appears. It's impossible to get into any kind of groove and sail the boat so we are making very slow progress.

And as insult to injury, there is a .3-.5kt current that alternates pushing us either west or south. Doesn't sound like much, but it's 6-12nm / day which is like losing 1-1.5hrs of progress each day

Then this morning's forecast showed that our "southern strategy" (worked for Nixon!), was not going to work because the wind was going to die out entirely. Previously the forecast had shown that the wind would clock dramatically to the WNW so taking the ENE wind to the south, then turning up when it backed would give us good speed. But now the model says the wind will die entirely if we head that way. The GRIBs say that right now we should have 8kts from 20 degrees magnetic when in fact the wind is blowing from 70 degrees magnetic. That's the difference between sailing to San Francisco and sailing to Ecuador. So we motor slowiy north.

I have no explanation for the winter weather. The surface analysis shows nothing but white space and two isobars between our current position and California. No fronts, no nothing. So where do we get two days of rain clouds and squalls? NOAA, your funding is in question. The only explanation for the wind at 70 versus 20 is that the high is further east than the NOAA computer models think it is, hence the wind is still bending around the SE corner of the high, rather than blowing north/south on it's east side.

All we can do is cope with what we've got and try to move towards San Francisco while using our remaining fuel as judiciously as possible and sailing when the breeze will let us make progress towards home. We remain ever optimistic that the wind will eventually match the GRIBs and we'll be able to point the bow towards California. At this point we've made a decision to motor slowly NE to take some time off the clock so that we don't arrive at 2am.

ETA: Friday morning