Tiki Blue still does not have a solid internet connection, so this update was based on a voice mail via satelite phone. Please excuse any interpretation errors as the message was translated into text via the voice message.
Daily blog for Wednesday, July 23. Written by Judy and read by Torben.
Wednesday afternoon.....we've received some requests about what life is like on board Tiki Blue with 825 (?) miles to Hawaii. I can tell you we have pretty much established a routine. Our clocks stay on Pacific Standard Time, so it is light out until 10 pm. We keep watch with the same (schedule?). We have two positions with our watch system: a driver and standby (?). We're on for two and off for three. Consequently, there is a lot of sleep walking going on, which is always .... entertaining(?)...
These past few nights, we've been subject to squalls. Last night we had an 'all hands on deck' situation. In the middle of the night, the squall was approaching, bringing winds with it up to 29 knots. We had all crew members attend their stations in case we needed to quickly drop the spinnaker. All the squalls blew through without consequence and we were relieved to go back to bed and sleep.
I have finally obtained my sea legs and moving about the boat is second nature now. I have reduced the number of bruises considerably. However, cooking ....still presents a challenge as things are always sliding at in opportune times........................we are washing dishes using sea water and using our baby wipes. Other than that, not much to see. I saw this 'movie before' in 2006 (?)....I'm now adding to my list of eulogies (?) offshore. ---Signed Judy.
We're continuing to sail on to Hawaii through the Pacific...things are not going exactly as planned, but we're still on track (?). We are using a GPS (Global Positioning System) on board that uses a network of military sattelites to provide continuous latitude and longitude positions. It also gives us current heading and speed information. So finding Hawaii is as easy as setting up a waypoint (GPS target) and sailing towards it.
Our routing is more complicated. When we left home, we anticipated predicting weather patterns by accessing weather reports (?not sure about this?). We intended to use the satellite phone to download daily weather/wind reports, but the satellite phone has not worked well for that.
(without access to daily wind reports we)...........In preparing the routing plan for our trip to Hawaii we took the pacific high into consideration. The pacific high (resides) in the north pacific..............................................
Every morning at 9 am Ryan conducts the daily check-in and also listens for the positions of the other boats. He then inputs the coordinate information into a computer program that gives us everyone's daily runs, (positions) .........In the beginning of the race ............ we decided to sail to the south to avoid the pacific high. We were concerned about being too close to the high and running out of wind. Going south and gaining some distance for the first couple days worked out pretty well. We're approaching the southern part of our route and the Captain is watching our angle and determining when to gybe for our final approach to Hawaii.
We've been gaining on our sister ship ( the "competition") Bequia for several days and are looking forward to Thursday's (07-24-2008) position report to see if we're ahead of them. Then we will start working on ......
It is presently 8:30 pm on Wednesday, the crew is having chicken and coleslaw for dinner.
We have the kite (spinnaker) up on starboard pole........we are 692 (?) nautical miles from the finish. It is warm, we're wearing shorts, and everyone is having a great time.
~ Team Tiki Blue
Listen to Torben's Update. PART I PART II
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