A very brief summary of two weeks sailing

The summarizer has moved from one apartment to another. Pretty exhausting, and on top of that internet connection problems. Will try to make a brief summary of the past two weeks. And I do recommend the Google map, kept updated by another member of the home team.

Sunday September 13th, Day 1: cleared out from San Diego. Setting sail for French Polynesia.
Monday, Day 2: settling into the routine of alternating watches. Weak winds, but making OK distance.
Tuesday, Day 3: Making good speed under skies full of stars all the way down to the horizon. No other ships, no birds but some flying fish.
Wednesday, Day 4: Wind slackening a bit. Ghosts knocking on the hull.
Thursday, Day 5: Stronger winds again, lots of sail management through the night, interrupted sleep. Then some great sailing through the day, the wind just right.
Friday, Day 6: Good speed. Using the lifelines as ever - and thinking of all the "lifelines" at home.
Saturday, Day 7: Thomas at the blog, explaining about the sails and how Anastasia sails well even in weak winds. Lots of sail power there. Later A the K reports their first fish, a golden Dorado!
Sunday, Day 8: A visit from the birds. Have been southbound, making less distance per day, for a couple of days to get back on course.
Monday, Day 9: Making record speed. Nights are getting tropically warm.
Tuesday, Day 10: A little less wind. The days are easily spent managing sails - learning a new ship - and attending to other chores, like watermaking and thending the machines. Later: very tropical, windless patches - running the diesel engines.
Wednesday, Day 11: Three plastic bottles in the doldrums - fortunately no sighting of the rumoured floating garbage island.
Thursday, Day 12: Drama! Rainstorm, gale, choppy waves. Taking in sail. Busted halyard on the foresail. Later discovering the halyard of the staysail was busted as well. Repairs.
Friday, Day 13: More drama: the three bands fixing the yoke to the mainsail busted too. Aging/material fatigue... not so strange, perhaps that it all happens at the first bit of tough weather since Anastasia hasn't really sailed for several years. The 240 meters of special lashing bands that seemd like unneccessary overweight on the fllight from Gothenburg don't seem so unnecessary any more.
Saturday, Day 14: All repairs done, steady wind from just the right quarter, great sailing.
Sunday, Day 15: New record distance, still very suitable winds. With the seas washing over the deck most of the time all hatches must be closed. Fairly muggy belowdecks. Salt, salt, salt everywhere.

Sailing!!

* New batteries installed on Monday morning by repairman Eric.
* Monday: SAILING. Passing the Golden Gate bridge, westbound, 4pm. WITH the tide and AGAINST the wind. Choppy. Later, out on the Pacific, almost windless with a long, slow, nauseating swell
* Tuesday: A the K on the night watch. Monterey and Carmel behind them. Steady wind from the rear, black night with a narrow strip of moonlight. Later increasing wind, had to take in sail. Making very good speed. Check out the map.
* Wednesday: Second night. Entering Santa Barbara Channel. Finding their routines - taking turns sleeping. Th wakes A the K up at dawn to see the dolphins. At least 30 individuals - two or three pods, gathered to check out Anastasia and follow in her wake for a while... smiling their dolphin smiles, then hurrying on. Going to a dolphin staff meeting, sez A the K.
* Thursday: Dana Point - goal of the first leg of the trip. Visiting Th's uncle Karl Erik. Arrived past midnight, just found a quay-berth and went to sleep. Woken up by a grumpy and dissatisfied Harbour Master at six. Made arrangements with the yacht club, supposedly including wifi - but the password won't work.
* Friday: Posting from Starbucks - still no wifi. Checking the blog and reading comments (which is not possible over Iridium). Will remain at Dana Point until Tuesday, waiting for a spare relay for the AIS.

Second week in Alameda

As busy as the first.

* A the K goes grocery shopping on a large scale, observing logistics problems at the supermarket: each can must be scanned individually at the checkout. No programming for scanning just one can and entering "times X".
* The service guys who come to set up the new wind meter fail to get the antenna cable down through the main mast "it's stuck - you have to take off the mast" - Thomas shows them the way by getting a weighted nylon cord through. Piece of cake for a Swedish sailor. Well, there won't be any service guys out on the Pacific.
* Two days in Nelsons Marine - Anastasia up for a paint job. Two days = two layers of paint. While the Nelsoners take care of the paint, the Anastasia crew services gaskets and o-rings and cares for the crusty surface of rudder and propeller. End result: Anastasia is tip top under the waterline
* Including a new 50 kg anchor - the old 20 kg anchor not heavy enough for the Patagonian archipelago. As the wise New Zealander would have it: "When people start laughing at your anchor, THEN you know you're beginning to get it right.
* Weather in Alameda has been summer hot. R&R for the crew has included première steaks on the LPG grill and going to Fisherman's Wharf for crab. Everything has gone according to schedule, sailing on Monday!

The week that went

Still in Alameda, preparing. Eric the Repairman went over the engine one whole day in the beginning of the week (Monday or Tuesday - not sure how the blog counts the days). More services booked - everything that CAN be serviced WILL be serviced before they set off. And for contact with service people in California you need a US phone number, so A the K got a pre-paid sim card for the purpose.
* Hard work from 7 in the morning to 10 in the evening - ALL equipment must be tested, including the hammock, fortunately. The weather looks lovely over there.
* On Thursday, shopping for charts, fixing the antenna for the Iridium system. When blog posts come with funny line breaks, they are posted by satellite phone.
* Some people at home are getting restless after seven days - but two weeks of preparation were always in the plan. On Monday the cruiser will be hauled out of the water, for a paint job. Smooth gliding, Anastasia!
* Saturday: shopping for fishing equipment. Huge Cedar Plugs for tuna!! Also a test trip, flying the Swedish flag. Looks good!!!

Sunday morning

This is the first installment of the English summaries I have promised to make. I think I'll try to do them on Sunday mornings. As stated in the two previous posts:

1) The flight went well, no problems with the luggage or customs. All passengers on the Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong, arriving at the same time as AK & Th had heavier and unwieldier luggage than the extremely heavy and unwieldy packing of our travellers.

2) The trip to IKEA also went very well, apart from some confusion about sizes and shapes of pillows & bedding. At the checkout the cashier had to split the entries in two, because the cash register wouldn't take all the items on a single receipt. Last item bought was cloudberry jam, which A the K has NEVER bought before. I think she doesn't like it much.

Another way of keeping up with AK & Th in English might be to use the Google translator, which is getting pretty good. Although it does some weird or plain stupid things, too. Like translating "packningar" with "gaskets" even though it's in a context of luggage.