Captain's blog Sea Date July, 2, 2009, No Really

Captain's Blog Sea Date July, 2, 2009
Days at sea 3
0600 Position Lat 28'32 Long. 121'59
Distance travailed in 24 hours Noon to Noon: 99.4
Wind speed 3k
wind direction 220
boat speed 1.7k
Bar 1000 -1

well i would like to give you more tech stuff, but there really is not to much going on out here. since last blog, the wind dropped almost to nothing. the sails were flogging, and it sucked. so we decided to throw up a kite and see what happened, we got it to fly for a bit but the main seemed to be sucking the wind out of it. so we dropped the main. i know for all those cool guy racers out there you must just be shacking your head, oh well, it was what would work the best. we ran like that for half the day and into the night. we had the poll down almost on the head stay and the kite strapped. really i cant stress how it was the only sail we could get to stay full and keep the boat moving in just barely, almost, kind of, not really a good direction.
When i came on watch with Mike last night we still had the kite up, the wind was coming and going, there for the most part (at a whooping 4K) but then it would leave, Mike brought up a good point, that we could probably light matches and burn them down to our finger tips. By the time Chase came up the wind had dropped even more, yes that is possible, he saw 3 shooting stars, i did not see any. i guess i was to busy replaying the weather forecast in my mind, and wondering what went wrong. The moon went down and took the rest of the wind with it. oh im not kidding, we could see the reflection of the stars in the ocean, sounds romantic, not when your doing a 2300 mile ocean race.
Richard relived me from watch and about an hour latter Chase came down to wake me up, I guess i forgot that we weren't doing the Ensanad race, cause that's where we were headed. Chase took the helm while Richard and i took down the shoot and put the rest of the sails back up. I tell you Richard is a mad man when it comes to sail changes, i kept wondering were the fire was. we got that whole change out done in less then 5 minutes. i guess for the most part it was working.
I woke up this morning to a discouraging fleet standing at radio check in. the up side to it was according to the weather from the other boats its a lot of the same across the board. after that Richard and i too a look at a new weather forecast, maybe we are to optimistic but i guess, you know it can only get better. Thank baby Jesus for the new Sobstad no. 1. its pretty to look at and is doing a good job. today has been the day of tacks, we just keep tacking toward the wind and trying to stay on a good course. whatever
just ten minutes ago we put up a shoot, it didn't work for us, but we looked back and the boat behind us took our lead and put one up too, now the guys on deck say there is a boat in front of us doing the same. its not going to work for them but at least they are slowing there boat up just as we did. now we are trying to figure a way to make it look like we are flying a shoot well, but really still have our white sails up, you know just to mess with the other boats around.
our windx is broken, i could careless sense there is no wind to read, but we all figured that since the wind was light we might as well send Mike aloft, this is after Chase and Richard tried to fix it deck side. My mom was at the helm, she a really good light wind helms lady, Mike was not swinging into space, and the boat was on course. but it was all just a wast of time, no fix on the windx, oh well.
The highlight of our days is the food, my mom is in charge of lunch, she has been making some killer sandwiches, today was the best, chicken salad sandwich with avocado and tomatoes, with chips and pickles, finished off with famous amous cookies. Richard has been doing dinners, he boils sea water and adds a little ketchup salt and pepper and severs it with crackers, no not really, he puts our MRE packages inside to heat, last night was chili with rice and corn, (he made the rice and corn). Chase and Mike are on clean up. it was so good that for the ten minutes you were eating it you had no idea there was no wind.
The crew of Addiction wants to wish my big brother Phillip a safe trip. he just left for Louisiana, he will be the chief mate on an American Marine tug. we love you Phill, have fun! Mom send her love, she wants you to be safe and to not make anyone cry. thank you Bill Meyers for posting the pictures of us leaving Long Beach, we got a great send off! Hi Dean we all missed seeing you at the start, Mike has no idea what you are talking about. Richard gives all his aloha form the coast of Mexico to his new grand nephew and congratulations! Olives D and Oopu. also Dad and Ron i got your email, i will try to radio on the 4th.
LA out

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