A nice birthday present

Day 19, odometer 686M, distance from start 600M
Solo career total 863 days
Overall career total 947 days

All right, dot watchers: you probably noticed that obvious turn to southwest in my course. It was a lot of time on the oars and constant monitoring of winds and currents by me on the rowboat and by Jason Christensen onshore at Racing The Wind (https://racingthewind.com). At times this relentless gauntlet that the Pacific had thrown at me to trap me near shore felt hopeless. During what resembled an obstacle course, I skirted back eddies, used a lick of useful current here and a dash of helpful wind there to finally reach far enough west to get my break.

Beginning on Friday I received a refreshing 36 hour spell of ENE wind episode that set the seas in my favor. Since then the forecast has remained northerly allowing me to run southwest. In addition, the wind came down from 20 knots to low teens which reduced the swells. Now I could receive the waves starboard side abeam while rowing, adding more westing as a result of my efforts. It all added up. I was able to move into a current running 220T and stay in the wind flow that will run west of the dreaded wind hole to my south, to become the trade winds toward Hawaii. Within three days by my birthday, I will be established in those trade winds.

The price of my slow progress while trying to pull away from the shore was first a blistered right hand but more importantly, it probably cost me a few days. Any extra day out here means that much later arrival at Waikiki and added exposure to hurricane risk. I intend a stopover at Waikiki for some fixes, more on that on my next post. I reckon my arrival there will be in early September.

I should note that at the suggestion of Nicolai Maximenko at the University of Hawaii, I agreed to have a plan in place for an orderly evacuation if this crossing does not evolve as intended or if a hurricane is forecast to cross over me. So I contacted our good friend, recently retired NOAA Commander, Mark Miller. Now he and Jason will be liaising with the US Coast Guard Rescue Coordination Center Alameda to develop a script to execute, should it be necessary, to route the nearest vessel to my location. This approach is better than a chaotic scramble that an EPIRB may generate. If the shore team calls for evacuation, I will comply. Safety is always paramount. I would rather live to row another season.

Erden.

(Actual Birthday - 14 July)