[PUP] Pacific Crossing

[Eric Grab]

Hi Ken and PUPers,

We are indeed leaving in the next few weeks. The departure window is between
April 14 and May 1. We have not had a chance to post much about it on our
blog, but you can be sure we have been really busy!

Good set of questions. Here are the answers:

1) Alone? We are going alone, but there are several boats doing the Pacific
crossing aka "Puddle Jump". A sailboat currently in Ensenada might be
leaving the same time as us. Also another Nordhavn 43 is coming from
Galapagos about the same time as well. While unlikely we will sight them
during the passage, we might get pretty close. And of course we are looking
forward to meeting up with other Puddle Jumpers in the Marquesas.

2) Route? Using Visual Passage Planner our current plans are for a pretty
direct route from San Diego to Nuka Hiva. Plug in the middle setting for
speed and wave height and that gives you our planned route. Of course as it
gets closer we may adjust to due weather. Essentially during the first few
days we head more south before we turn westward.

3) Who? The crew for the 19-20 day passage will be me, my wife Christi, and
friend Richard. Richard happens to own Nordhavn 43-14, so he is quite
familiar with the 43 to say the least. We have been trying out a 4 hour
watch schedules and so far so good, so we will see how that works for the
long passage.

4) Daily reports? For e-mail we have SSB Sailmail and Iridium sat phone. We
hope to send out reports periodically during the passage. And we will be
regularly calling a couple people on land to inform them of our progress. We
will also try the SSB nets. We have our HAM licenses so maybe some HAM
contacts too. While we had to pass the Morse code test back when we got our
license you do not now, so get those HAM sets going.

5) Weather router? Yes, we are going with OMNI. We will get weather fax via
SSB, weather router reports via e-mail and voice, and weather data files
through the e-mail systems.

And here is some more information people might be interested in:

We plan to use about 1000 gallons out of our 1250 capacity on the 2950 nm
passage from San Diego to Nuka Hiva. At 1500 rpm we burn 2 gallons an hour
and plan for a conservative average of SOG of 6 knots with prevailing winds
and currents. Of course we might slow down or speed up depending on how
things go.

We have a sextant, a few accurate watches, and paper charts to help back up
the electronic goodies. We have a Faraday cage which contains a GPS, VHF, a
watch, and calculator. Of course there are lots of other things. And then
there have been the training and classes. It is a quite the large project to
make it all happen.

If anyone has any questions let me know. Ask here, or consider using our
blog listed below. Maybe a fun and useful game right now is "What did Kosmos
forget?".

Anyway, I am heading home from the office to install some stereo speakers in
the pilothouse. You got to have music right? :-)

--
Eric Grab
Kosmos http://kosmos.liveflux.net/blog (Nordhavn 43-18)
San Diego, CA

-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Williams [mailto:kenw@seanet.com] 
Sent: Friday, March 23, 2007 11:44 AM
To: eric@liveflux.net; 'Passagemaking Under Power List'
Subject: Pacific Crossing

Eric:

I noticed your posting.

Aren't you leaving for a Pacific Crossing in the next few weeks? I would be
very curious to have you give a quick summary of your upcoming voyage. 

- Are you traveling alone?
- What route are you taking?
- Who will be onboard?
- Will you be sending out daily trip reports?
- Did you hire a weather router?

Ken Williams
Nordhavn68.com