Home for ten days now, rested and busy unloading New Morning. Finally getting around to a passage summary.
Total miles sailed: 2,468nm
Rhumb line: 2,081nm
Days on passage: 14.75
Best day: 187nm
Worst day: 144nm
Average day: 167nm
Average speed: 7.0kts
Hours motoring: 172hrs (7.2 days!)
Fuel consumption: 1.4gph
This was the slowest passage I've ever had on New Morning. The first five days, as we made our northing, the true wind speed was consistently in the high teens and low twenties, but with lots of squalls. The squalls covered large areas (e.g., 2,000 square miles) and were impossible to get around. I'll post some pictures of the radar soon to give you an idea. We frequently found ourselves with either too little sail area in anticipation of a big blast from a squall, or too little wind after a squall had passed (depending on which side).
Once we reached the high, it was improbably large. The high stretched from about 38N all the way into Canada. The usual strategy of going over "the top" of the high was not an option. We motored across the high at about 39N, expecting to find strong winds on the other side. But when we emerged from the high, we first had 36hrs of "winter" weather with cooler winds from the NE and lots of rain and squalls. We made poor progress due to the constant squalls which shifted the wind back and forth from a true direction of 35-120 degrees.
Once the "winter weather" was over we had about 12hrs of really delightful sailing before the wind went light and shifted all the way to the west. An odd little low pressure area was hanging off the coast of Oregon and shifted the wind to the west, forcing us to start motoring again. At this point fuel was getting low so for two days we cut the engine back to 1800rpm which gave us 6kts but burned only 1gph and gave us our poorest day of just 144nm.
Eventually the low dissipated (about 24-36hrs after NOAA had forecast) and we had plenty of breeze the last 24hrs as the water temperature dropped all the way to 52F and it became very cold. We had 20+ kts the last day and 30-35kts for the final four hours before we reached the Farallone Islands. Once we passed the SF pilot buoy the breeze began to fade entirely and we actually had to motor down the ship channel before picking up a light southerly breeze that carried us through the Golden Gate.
Although most people consider a 15 day passage from Hawaii to San Francisco to be fairly fast, we have to give most of the credit to Yanmar and large fuel tanks on New Morning.
