Noon today marks the end of the first week, and for the last day or two Oso has been inching along the edge of the trade winds, with the solid, stronger trades inching away from us to the south as we approach. We’d read that the trades can be lighter and further south early in the season, and that’s what we’re experiencing.
A few days ago, we decided to detour several hundred miles to the south in the hopes of skirting a large windless area. The forecasted winds were very light, but it looked like we might have just enough wind to sail slowly south until we reached the solid trade winds. Even though it would add a couple hundred miles to the overall trip, we prefer sailing to motoring and an extra day or two tacked onto a 20+ day trip doesn’t seem like too big of a deal.
It turned out that we were able to sail almost the entire way south to where the trades were forecasted to be. The forecast called for 6kts of breeze, but we actually saw mostly 7-8kts. That doesn’t sound like a big difference, but the extra knot or two of wind powers up the sails just enough to let Oso shoulder aside the waves and keep forward progress, albeit not very fast progress.
We’ve now turned southwest on a direct course for French Polynesia. In a rare move for us, we kept the large (1600 sq ft / 160 m2) gennaker up all last night, as the conditions are wonderfully settled. Overnight, the wind drops to 4 or 5kts for a few hours, but the calm sea conditions mean that the sails stay mostly full, only disrupted by a stray roll caused by a long period swell.
We’re looking forward to getting to some more solid breeze, but we’re definitely enjoying the peaceful, gentle sailing in these lighter conditions. It’s not what we expected, but it could definitely be worse!
All’s well aboard.
Day Seven
06 51.4S 90 01.3W
159nm
