12/18/2011 - Day 2 begins1

It's just a little after 10 AM. We've been on this trip for 24 hours. We've covered approximately 111 miles in that time. Up until about 45 minutes ago, it's been a motor-sailing trip. But we finally got some winds that were blowing enough to move us along at a decent speed. We're on a broad reach with winds of 5-7 knots on our port quarter and averaging a little under 4 knots of boat speed. Probably could do better if I knew how to sail. Ahhhh, details.

Big victory today. I finally got the Cape Horn windvane steering system up and running. Just in time, too, since the conditions are the kind that the autopilot doesn't like very much (wind and swells on the quarter that cause the boat to corkscrew). The windvane is doing a great job. Yaws a bit more than I'm used to with the autopilot, but, overall, we're on course. It does way better than I do when I'm hand-steering.

Swells are 1-2 feet out of the north-northwest and coming about every 5-6 seconds.

After I relieved Lulu on watch at about 0730, she fixed me breakfast and then hit the rack. Between the Stugeron, the rocking motion of the boat and the fact that the only sound is the hissing of the seas gong by the hull, she's hopefully sleeping pretty good.

We're out here in the middle of it now. No land in sight anywhere. We saw a couple of contacts on the AIS screen during the night but no one came near enough to actually see. Well, there was one passenger ferry that passed us but that was pretty early on. A cargo ship crossed in front of us a little while ago but even he was over 7 miles away. Pretty empty out here.

OK, time to upload this and send a position report as well. 132 nautical miles to go.

Later.

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