EPAC High Behaving Badly

June 24, 2010

On the fifth day of the Singlehanded TransPac the fleet is seeing spotty light wind conditions. The EPAC high is behaving badly, with wind holes spreading out and hitting the boats to the north, and making its way to the southern group. It looks like there may be relief by Sunday as the high may start heading north again.

The rhumb liners up top are hoping for their wind to return first but that seems unlikely. Jeff Lebesch's trimaran Hecla is still in a good position to the south, along with Max Crittenen's Solar Wind, but they've only eked out 25 miles in the past 12 hours.

Ben Mewes on Mirage is officially out of the race and back home in Richmond. Mirage was taking on too much water down below. It seems a mystery leak had sprung open and Ben pulled the plug thinking it's better to fly to Hanalei now instead of playing submarine for 15 days. Al Germain on Bandicoot headed back out yesterday and is trying to catch up as the fleet parks for a while. And he may do just that.

See http://manati.orbit.nesdis.noaa.gov/datasets/ASCATData.php (wind waves composite), www.atmos.washington.edu/~ovens/loops/wxloop.cgi?mm5d1_wssfc+//72/3 (Pacific High Sunday prediction 1700 PDT) and http://sfbaysss.org/TransPac/transpac2010/race_tracker/position.html