(I have had problems viewing the tracker, especially on older browsers.)
Loophole posted up at the Morro Bay Yacht Club in Morro Bay, CA. The plan is to leave for Hawaii from here.
Between MONGO and now Loophole, I have had a lot of light-air struggles on the California coast. Compare this with a couple of potential alternatives, and this doesn't sound so bad. Though I don't plan to use it much when sailing to Hawaii, having an engine was key in making both Monterey and Morro Bay by night fall, if at all. Rolling out of Monterey just before day break on a Tuesday and arriving 35 hours later at sunset on Wedneseday in Morro bay, this leg of the journey was a race against time, set in the slow-motion setting that is Loophole. In very light-air with a lot of swell in the water, light-air sailing - especially downwind - was very slow and challenging, and motoring wasn't much better. I don't know how much I have complained about it in these pages, but Loophole's achilles heel at this point is her 3-bladed fixed prop. I had hoped to remedy this problem before leaving, but that isn't the case so I suppose i'll just deal with it. While we struggled to make just 3 knots average VMG over the course of the trip from Monterey to Morro bay, I can take solace in two things: a) I should have much stronger, more consistent breeze on passage and b) I won't be doing much motoring while on passage.
The Navik wind vane "Jean le Cam" steering Loophole brilliantly well in light air, after a few small repairs in Monterey.
Also on the plus side, Jean le Cam performed brilliantly after the repairs that I made in Monterey, and the boat arrived in Morro Bay ready to throw on final provisions and head back to sea. This leg gained me some valuable experience in sailing the boat dead downwind under main and poled out genoa. This will likely be a very common sail plan on this trip to Hawaii, as it's looking pretty dead downwind for much of the way. The long-term forecast looks pretty good for having enough breeze to make decent average speeds, though i'll have to sail very far south to get that breeze, at a cost of several hundred extra miles and extra days at sea. This passage could likely be the longest that i've ever been at sea, as my current personal record is 23 days while en route from Kauai to Seattle in 2012. With any luck, my next update to these pages will be sometime around Christmas from the Hawaiian Islands. Aloha
-Ronnie Simpson
s/v Loophole
There is likely to be a lot of this on the way to Hawaii... dead downwind sailing