Today was another cold and grey day. The weather doesn't really need much of a mention, as it has been some form of grey seas and grey skies for days; however, it was nice that last night's wind had abated and we had a calmer downwind day. By afternoon the seas had eased so we could even point at Dutch Harbor again :)
The highlight of my morning was running the engine for 1 1/2 hours to warm the boat and provide hot water for dishes. I recently realized that, although I have been describing our practice as 'washing dishes in cold water' for the years that we were cruising in the tropics, this was entirely an overstatement - we washed dishes in room temperature (25-30 deg) water! Now that we have been reminded what cold water feels really like, we don't wash dishes as much in cold water anymore :) It is such a luxury to have hot water for this purpose!
We have reached the point in the passage where we could motor to land if we had to (e.g. in the case of a rig failure) so we can be a little more generous with our diesel usage than we were previously. Back in the doldrums, we calculated a portion for those light winds, a portion for the end of the passage, and a portion for our furnace. We have a plug stuck into the exhaust outlet of the furnace to prevent waves from slamming seawater up the pipes (and we have had some doozies along the way), so given that we are only a few days out from Dutch Harbor, and that even without the plug to remove the heater doesn't always work on the first go, it seems to me that it is simpler while we are on passage just to run the engine for the hour or so each day that we need heat. Benjamin keeps telling me that he likes the cold (while running around in bare feet no matter how many times I put wool socks on him) but I do find it chilly, and I am grateful every day for the heat exchanger on our engine!
The evening watch tonight was even calmer than the day watch: we had 10-12 kts of wind for most of it, so I could put the autopilot into 'wind navigate' and it kept us on a beam reach pointing at Umnak Pass for almost my entire watch. When the winds dropped below 10 kts and backed towards a broad reach, I put us on wind hold rather than wake Max during his off-watch to raise the rest of the main sail. Two hours of sailing 15 deg off-course is worth it to give the off-watch person their full sleep! As it turned out, I had 13 kts again before long, so I was doubly glad that I hadn't woken him up!
Love to all,
Elizabeth
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At 2019-07-01 4:36 PM (utc) SV Fluenta's position was 53°07.30'N 169°01.58'W
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