June 3rd 14:40PST
Althea
Tue 8 Jun 2004 14:24
Position 9 57n / 128 42w
All is well.
We just passed the 10th parallel and at the same time found ourselves 1320 miles from land in any direction. This is really the middle of the ocean! We caught another dorado and are having asian mahi mahi tonight with our middle of the ocean celebration.
We are supposed to be entering the doldrums now with notorious light winds and squalls, but we've had a 20 knot breeze off the port quarter all day and making fine time of over 7 knots good. We hit our highest boat speed this morning on Anne's watch at 9.84 knots. Now we are trying to hit 10. It is amazing how the boat gets more stable and quiet the faster we go. It is odd but welcomed. The convergence area is giving rise to lots of dramatic clouds. We had an amazing sunset complete with a double rainbow last night.
The convergence has brought a lot of rain along with the nice breeze which has cut into the bird watching. We've seen lots of birds in the past week, but only got serious with the field guide a couple of days ago. We have positively identified 5 species including 2 storm petrals, a shearwater, a petral, and a tropicbird. We also spied a red legged booby, but we aren't counting it since it was before we understood the proper way to identify these birds. Yes, we get excited about seeing birds. We haven't seen a ship in 10 days. Even the odd sea turtle or floating garbage will bring up everyone on deck. Interestingly, we have not seen a single porpoise since San Francisco. We have seen lots of flying fish including a few that landed on deck.
We are about 650 miles from where we cross the equator where we'll have our champaign ready. We are hoping for a landfall at Hiva Oa island in the Marquesas on the 14th, but this will no doubt be the wrong day.
Bob