Looking for a Way Home

Anybody following the Garmin tracker lately (https://share.garmin.com/SVQuijote) might wonder where we're going. For a while we were heading NW, then SE, now NE. What the heck is going on? Well... sailing is seldom about taking the direct route. The problem in our case is the weather. It's generating winds that are coming from precisely the place we want to sail to: our northeast. With winds from the northeast our starboard tack takes us westward and our port tack takes us southward. neither are taking is where we want to go.

The normal solution for doing this passage is to go NNW to get around a stationary high that parks itself north of Hawaii, then follow the wind into Puget Sound. The weather guys tell us that high is off in Lala Land somewhere, leaving chaos in its absenice.

It's no small problem. We need to get to a place where the wind is more favorable and we have limited fuel to do it. Our strategy now is to motor northeast for three days toward a place where a low pressure system is building. Or will be. We'll use its winds to push us further northeast.

Fingers crossed. Weather prediction is not very accurate beyond three days, but our little boat is so slow and this ocean is vast. We have no choice but to rely on a forecast four or five days ahead and hope for the best. If the forecast is accurate we'll be in good shape.