[Greyhawkupdates] Bobbing Along

[Tim Allen GREYHAWK]

Today has been quite different from the last few days and nights -- sunny, gentle breeze (or no breeze), calm seas - just enough swell to rock the boat and cause the sails to slat maddeningly. But it's warm and a chance to open hatches, air out the boat, dry our wet gear, and attend to other house keeping. Aggressive is on the horizon off our port quarter behind us, moving about as slowly as we are. We have been using all our light-air tricks, to good effect when we had 2 to 4 knots of wind. But now there is zero. At least we continue to drift in the right direction -- I think we're still catching a positive current from the cold-core eddy north of the stream. 

We've seen a number of ships traverse the area. But the most exciting thing was coming up on a family of whales bobbing along the surface. At first we couldn't make out what it was -- one whale? A school of dolphins? There were small blows, too big for a dolphin, but not big enough for a whale? There were several distinct humps that would rise out of the water simultaneously -- were the all attached to one big creature (and if so, what was it's orientation?), or were they separate animals? As we drifted closer it was clear there were several distinct animals. One of them, probably the largest, raised its square-ish head (could it have been a sperm whale?) and then dove showing us it's tail and flukes. A moment later it rose up out of the water a litte further off and came down with a big splash, breaching as if just to show off for us. The other humps were individual smaller whales who swam off after the bigger one without too much show, but what a truly incredible site!

The wind has shifted and we're now on port tack The cloud cover to the west suggests a warm front moving in. We're getting close enough that we can start to pick up NOAA weather broadcasts on the VHF, as well as the USCG talking to distressed boaters. Unfortunately, our cockpit mic has bitten the dust -- too much salt water -- and I'm not sure I can resurrect it. Other damages include a tear to our big 3/4 ounce spinnaker during the takedown yesterday, and the tail piece of the windex arrow broke off in yesterday's thunderstorm. Although it would just be doing pirouettes right now, we could use it in this light air. Now what's left of the arrow just points to the direction in which the boat is heeling... Fortunately none of our other electronics suffered any damage from lightning or other, and we do still have our Nexus wind instrument to keep us clued in.

Just under 132 miles to go; the weather gribs suggest we will have some wind -- not much but some -- now that we've gone through most of the shift. Let's hope. 5 knots would be nice -- we could really do a lot with that.

We'll get there eventually!

Tim and Wendy



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