Today's Report
Aug. 31/11 JST
Position: 27°03'N, 142°11'E (Ogasawara, Chichijima Island, Japan)
Remaining to Yokohama: 502 nm (ETA: ?)
Other than the passage of another tiring, bouncy day, nothing of much note to report onboard NBSDIII as Saito-san entered Day 5 of his solo Typhoon Talas soujourne. That's the good news. Happily, there continues to be no bad.
The second bit of welcome news is that Talas continues to moderate and by 1700 this afternoon had still not passed Chichijima, while maintaining sustained winds at under 36 kts.
At mid-afternoon ClearPoint showed the center of the eye to be 275 nm due west of the harbor and continuing to move sharply away to the west. Moreover, from the trend of the last 48 hours it looks like Talas may even lose her official status as a typhoon and become a tropical storm. It will still be immense, just not as powerful as originally forecast.
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| Talas as of 1700 today |
If projections hold, Saito-san will be enjoying clear skies in 2 days. By then much of central and northern Japan will be suffering through what is forecast to be a solid week of heavy rain. Tokyo is already muggily overcast.
Since Talas will still be directly in his path he will have to delay departure a few days until the heavy weather has largely cleared to the north up to at least the island of Hachijojima.
Saito-san reported that his morning close visual inspection showed no cracks in the standing rigging, but that several stanchion post bolts of the aft liferail had failed due, he said, to corrosion and movement. He confirmed he was able to replace the damaged bolts and does not consider it a problem. He said the mooring lines were all ok.
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| Projected course of Talas from the US Navy (click to enlarge) |
