Yesterday the wind died. It didn’t slowly diminish, it didn’t stop with a last hooray, like a car engine with a clogged fuel filter, giving you one more time a hundred meters, then dies and then does that three more times, no it instantly died and stayed that way. We were doing six knots and then we were doing nothing. Nada, zero, absolutely zilch. We weren’t heeling over anymore, we weren’t making a wake anymore, we weren’t doing anything anymore. So the captain got out a bottle of Scotch, poured us a stiff one and toasted to our first becalment. Odd thing to celebrate I thought and it wasn’t really our first one, but I certainly wasn’t one to argue.
We need to cross the high. Going north from Hawaii we knew we would hit a high-pressure system somewhere along the way between 30 and 45 degrees latitudes. Latitude 30 is called the ‘Horse Latitude’, there where becalmed sailing ships threw their horses overboard when water supplies ran low. We decided to hold on to our horses at this point as shortage of water wasn’t really an issue to us. And we actually made it all the way to the 35th parallel before we got becalmed. Pretty good, but still six hundred miles of unknown ahead of us.
A high-pressure system, the opposite of a low system, is created by air comes down from the atmosphere to the earth’s surface. These systems can be of any size, thousands of miles across, or hardly noticeable at all. They can occur anywhere in the world, but certain areas are more prone than others, such as the area we are in right now. They can be very intense, or barely registering. They generally equate to stars at night and sunshine and blue skies during the day. Pleasant weather all around, but no wind, no wind at all and wind is kind of essential to us. If we were on a motor yacht this weather would be da bomb, but we’re not, we’re sailing. And right now we’re not. We have a banner of water to cross of we which don’t know the width. It can be anywhere from one hundred to six hundred miles wide, the normal range around here.
How do cruisers deal with this? Simple. Get the Coast Guard on the radio! Either San Francisco or San Diego. Serving the public. That’s what they’re there for right?
“I’m here at 35 Latitude and 157 Longitude and I need a tow to somewhere between the 42nd and 45th parallel, or wherever the wind is hiding. Can you come and get me please? Well yeah, right away, of course, I haven’t got all week.”
What’s with those government people? And I’m sure they’ll dispatch a vessel tout suit to drag us across that dreaded high. We’re only 1700 nautical miles away, so no big deal. But, of course, the Coast Guard doesn’t respond to a request like that. And if they did, the answer would probably keep the hardiest of sailor blushing until the end of next week.
Lots of cruisers will power through these zones of high pressure. No biggie, just make sure you carry enough diesel. Others, often sailing purists, with unlimited time on their hands, will wait it out. Eventually winds will come they say. Which is true, but that ‘eventually’ can take an awfully long time to happen. Make sure you got enough water and food on board. And ask yourselves can you afford the time? Do you have to be somewhere at a certain time or date? Perhaps studies are waiting. Perhaps a leave of absence is coming to an end…. Ahh, perhaps mine is.
So here we are, we did ten miles in the last twenty-four hours. All done by Captain Dan between one and three this morning. For some reason the wind picked up and subsequently died again. I slept through it, I never got to sail, I never noticed a thing. We would like to power through the zone, but we don’t have the diesel. Or better, we potentially don’t have the diesel, as we don’t know how much we need. We have two tanks, each tank holds twenty gallons. In addition, we have four jerrycans holding twenty gallons for a grand total of sixty gallons. Our trusty old Perkins engine, running just under six knots, uses just under a gallon of diesel an hour. Conservatively calculated three hundred and sixty miles on our total supply.
Unless we figure out where the high-pressure zone is at its skinniest, we cannot risk powering through. And we’re not going to figure that out. Yes, we get weather forecasts through the single sideband radio every day, but just because you call them forecasts doesn’t make them any better than just mere guesses in my mind. So we don’t know if we can make it through. Plus we have to keep in mind we need some fuel in reserve to deal with weather systems when we get closer to Washington. On top of that we need some fuel to get us safely into a Seattle area marina, which now seems months away, but as soon the wind picks up hopefully only weeks.
So what is a guy to do than to sit in the cockpit in the heat, floating along on this wonderful ocean, working on a suntan that maxed out weeks ago, roasting almonds in the oven with salt, cayenne and rosemary, getting headaches from not drinking enough water while drinking boxed wine to make it even worse and instead of reading a Kindle ten hours a day be up to fourteen hours by eight ‘o clock in the evening. I don’t know, call me a lazy bum. But I’m not. I’m sailing.
