Posts Tagged ‘cruising’
The Clipper Route – a true cruisers choice.
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
Clipper ships would reach very well and run downwind, but couldn’t make much headway upwind. Although modern marconi rigged sailboats can point higher into the wind than the ships of yore, they are not all that comfortable when doing so.
There are only a few ways to get your boat up the west coast of the North America. Put it on a truck, motor directly up the coast, beat upwind – tacking up the coast, sail to Hawaii then cross back to the mainland, or the Clipper Route.
The Clipper Route was our choice when we sailed home from Mexico. I had taken other sailboats up the coast by motoring north and beating under sail, but those trips had been uncomfortable and stressful for both boat and crew. We wanted to have a more comfortable point of sail, we didn’t have a long range under power, and we only had a crew of two (my wife and I). Trucking would be expensive and no fun. We had made passages to Hawaii on other boats and considered this as the second best option, but it would involve a lay over and re-provisioning, plus the trip would have taken a lot longer.
Comfort comes in many forms at sea. Not the least of which is room to go with the flow. Along the coast you find strong winds and currents that can change quickly. More boats are lost to running aground on coastal passages than making bluewater crossings. We wanted the room to change course with the wind without worrying about rocks.
Plus the Clipper Route allowed for a more comfortable point of sail. In General the winds near the Pacific Coast of North America blow parallel ot the coast from North to South. By heading offshore, we had many miles of broad reach and running.
How to Clipper Route:
We started from Cabo San Lucas at the bottom of the Baja peninsula Mexico. The first few days we pointed as high into the wind as was comfortable for the conditions. This aimed us right for Hawaii — Yes that meant we were headed south when we wanted to go north, but we made up for it soon. As we got farther and farther from the coast the wind continued to veer and we kept moving in a more northerly direction. We didn’t have to adjust our sails for many days, we just kept the same point of sail and the boat made an arching course as the wind changed direction gradually until we were heading north.
The turning point of the Clipper Route is when you round the high. The Pacific High. In the summertime there is a predominant high pressure system that hangs out over the pacific usually between Hawaii and the mainland. The winds spiral clockwise around the Pacific High. It is desireable to travel to the west of the high and run with the westerlies over the top of the high to get to your destination on the mainland coast. Sometimes this high can be close in and south near California. Other times it can be up north of Hawaii and way out west. This leaves a bit of guessing when planning the voyage. We estimated our H28 would take between 45 and 60 days to make the passage since the high seemed to be hanging to the NW of Hawaii when we set sail.
It pays to watch the weatherfax or listen to the forecasts. As we were making good time on a broad reach (on our best day we covered over 140 nautical miles! — more like one would expect from a 40′ vessel) we realized that the high had become unstable and was breaking appart. As the main high fizzled out near the Aleutians a low filled in. A new high was slow to form, and when it did we found ourselves in the middle of it.
Usually getting caught in the middle of the high is undesireable. You can find dead calm waters and peaceful relaxation, but the wind may not return for a very long time. We were lucky. As is often the case when a new high is forming near the coast, ours was slow to form and started out quite flat (short north to south, wide east to west). We were through it within a matter of hours instead of days.
A cold front filled in behind us and we ran before it all the way home to the Straits of Juan de Fuca. We bombed downwind from latitude 48. This is not the usual Clipper Route, but we were looking for a break. We were glad that the trip was shorter than expected, but running before this strong front was much more work than reaching had been in similar winds. Our auto pilot broke many times before it died completely and we had to work much harder at the helm.
Our passage took 29 days from Cabo San Lucas to Port Angeles, WA.
