{"id":773,"date":"2002-06-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2002-06-04T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/?p=773"},"modified":"2012-03-07T22:56:17","modified_gmt":"2012-03-08T03:56:17","slug":"s_logs-dashew-dashew182","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/s_logs-dashew-dashew182\/","title":{"rendered":"Panama to San Diego: Brownies Offset Wind on the Nose"},"content":{"rendered":"
1900 hours – A double batch of brownies, and the tropical wave moves off to the west.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

1900 hours. The big news this evening is from Beowulf’s galley – a double batch of brownies. Usually an inventory of yummies would have been manufactured and stored in the freezer prior to departing. But we’ve been moving so fast that this has been the first chance. The real test will be later when the whipped cream is blended with these delicious morsels!<\/p>\n

The other news is the weather, or lack therof. After last night’s excitement, the tropical wave has moved off to the west a bit. We’ve still got overcast skies – which is good as they keep us cool. But there is a lot less thunderstorm-looking stuff around. However, we’ll probably see some big cells move off the land later this evening (the T-storm cells become more active during the evening hours when the tops cool, enhancing the temperaure difference with the ground\/water at the bottom. During the day, when the cloud tops warm, convective activity is supressed).<\/p>\n

The breeze all afternnon has been ten knots, right on the nose. So we’ve been motoring without sail. The wind is teasing us right now, having moved to almost an angle where we can use the main again.<\/p>\n

We’ve been experimenting with different speeds, prop pitch settings, and sail combos to find the most efficient and comfortable combination. Varying prop pitch with the Hundested controllable pitch propeller makes a big difference. We seem to be able to maintain 10 knots into the headwind and sloppy sea for about 3.5 US gallons per hour. That’s very efficient for a boat our size at this sort of speed-length ratio. Of course when we can use the main – which requires an apparent wind angle of at least 18 degrees for positive drive – the speed goes up and\/or fuel consumption comes down.<\/p>\n

We thought very hard about stopping at Barillas Marina in San Salvador. We’ve heard rave reviews of this lovely estuary, and we would be there in the early AM. However, you have to cross a breaking bar, and if the weather were to turn bad, we’d be stuck inside. As we have a clear shot for now over the next few days we’ve decided to continue on. Hard to pass up a new spot to explore.<\/p>\n

The next tropical wave is off the coast of Colombia, which means it will be in this part of the world in two or three days – by which time we should be far enough into Mexico that the wave will not affect us. The potential tropical disturbance to our NW has not materialized – yea for the jet stream which is preventing cyclogenisis at present.<\/p>\n

The New Orleans (*NMG) fax station has been inreadable all day. However, we’ve been able to get GRIB weather data with the MaxSea chopper using SailMail.<\/p>\n

While this is being written the wind has backed to 260T and is now at a favorable angle. If it stays put, after dinner we’ll do some sailing!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1900 hours – A double batch of brownies, and the tropical wave moves off to the west.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beowulf-logs","category-dashew-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}