Need For Speed!

As we tick down these last hundreds of miles over the next few days, boat speed is a key focus of ours. Mainly because, the faster we sail, the sooner we arrive in San Francisco. The weather forecasts have promised that the wind will shift from the north east to the north. This will allow us to reach (i.e. sail off the wind, and faster) for our final approach to SF. We are waiting patiently to see the wind shift north ... and we still wait. The winds have been variable (5 - 15 knots) over the last few days. In the light stuff, we have had good luck motoring to about 7 knots (speed over ground, our boat speed is higher, but we have some adverse current on our nose). When the wind builds, we are able to shut off the motor and get about the same speed with our sails.

However, 7 knots does not get us into SF on Monday morning (our current target). We will need to average closer to 8 knots, but we will not get that boat speed until the wind shifts to the north. So, we continue to wait ...

As for arrival time, if we do not get a bump in boat speed it is looking like a late Monday/early Tuesday arrival. If we do get the speed increase, then we are hoping on a Monday arrival during daylight hours (latest estimate is afternoon). We will keep you all posted as we get closer, and hopefully you will see some speeds around 8 knots on the tracker (the YB tracker measures our speed over ground). Conditions off shore look pretty breezy for our arrival, but at least we will be sailing with the wind. It may get wet, but should be more comfortable than when we left Hawaii (and better than when Bullet departed SF for the race last month).

The weather has been largely overcast the last couple of days, which unfortunately meant we were not able to view last nights meteor shower.