Position: 48 degrees, 09 minutes north; 140 degrees, 38 minutes west 134 nm day

Grey, grey, grey. That’s all we see. You have to look out for the dark grey though. No bueno.

You have to watch out for the dark grey bits!

Last night the “all grey” started with my watch at 0200 local. Ann had some stars and an early look at the moon before the clouds came in, but by my watch – grey. Not much to do until about 0400 when a squall came up that was bigger than the others we had all night and threatened to blow the jib, so I furled it. The rest of the morning and afternoon was 25 to 30 plus winds, rain and 9 foot waves. All we had up (thank goodness) was a double reefed main and at times that was too much but once you’re in it, going downwind there’s not much you can do. So, we chalked up some good miles. We were hitting 8 and 9 knots and topped out at 10.9. That’s pretty fast for just a double reefed main.

Our weather forecast led us to believe we would have moderating winds turning to the north by noon. But noon came and went and it seemed windier than ever. Sit, wait and hang on! Ann went to sleep at 1300 which started my afternoon watch. At about 1430 we sailed into the blackest, meanest looking squall we’d seen with heavy wind and rain. I thought we’d never come out when suddenly I sensed a wind shift. Sure enough the wind went from west the northwest in the blink of an eye. I tweaked the Monitor to make sure we didn’t start to go those big waves the wrong way and suddenly we emerged from the crap into sunshine! Phew, just in time – I was getting exhausted just worrying if the weather was getting worse.

So we’re in the new wind heading due east. We’ve got a day or so as the wind clocks to the north and then northeast at which point we’ll be in the center of a low with no wind at all and have to motor a while. We’re trying to beat another low that’s coming down from Alaska, so that’s OK, I’m all for getting in as fast as we can.

Stay tuned. We’re 630 miles from the entrance to Straight of Juan de Fuca which is the entrance to the San Juan Islands. Victoria is about 40 more miles from there.