We are sitting in the lovely town of Eureka, checking out the restored Victorian buildings and visiting the redwood forests (amazing creatures, those redwoods!). We’re waiting for a northerly gale to develop some decent size waves.

Right now the forecast for the next few days is strong northerlies. As we want to do some surfing (all of this flat water cruising has us needing an adrenaline fix) we will wait for 24 hours so the seas have a chance to build and lengthen.

As you can see from the surface analysis above, the Pacific High has reestablished itself. Perhaps the last fling at the end of summer. That dashed line inland of the California coast represents a thermal low. Thermal lows are created by heating of the land mass, causing the air above the surface to warm, rise, and create low pressure. The high pressure offshore rushes in to fill the lowered pressure region. This is a large scale version of what happens with your local afternoon sea breeze. In this case, the dance between the high and the thermal low will create a coastal gale.

Eureka is just below the Oregon border, about even with the bottom of the second wind flag’s base. There is a breaking bar at the harbor entrance with which we must deal. High slack water is tomorrow about 1000 AM, and we don’t expect a problem with northerly swells and wind waves (southwest would be another situation). For more information on running breaking bars see our Practical Seamanship.

Leaving early will allow us lots of daylight to see the waves, and evaluate how Wind Horse is doing. We are going to start out heavily loaded with fresh water tanks filled (1900 US gallons), and then pump them almost dry to test our motion and handling in light trim.

Just 28 miles south lies Cape Mendocino, one of the really tough pieces of water on this coast. We expect wind acceleration and possibly stacked waves from a counter current which is sometimes on hand. And if we don’t find gnarly conditions there, Point Arenas awaits further down the coast.

To make sure there are no hidden risk factors, we’ve been watching the 500 mb weather data. This is for tomorrow, and it looks benign (lots more weather data and an explanation of these factors in detail is in Mariner’s Weather Handbook).

We’ll try and update with photos tomorrow, weather and e-mail permitting.

Post Script – September 6 – 0909

We are past the Humbolt Bay bar and offshore. Waves at the entrance were 8 to 10 feet (2.4 to 3m) but not breaking. We had a knot of current against us and with the waves, which reduced wave size and steepness. An hour from now, when the current turns to ebb, and is against the waves, the bar will be too dangerous to pass – even for us. While the forecast remains 35 to 40 knots from the north, we do not see any evidence of this yet. But we are hoping that NOAA will turn out to be right.