Day 34

We have had another very peaceful day aboard Hamble Warrior with a beautiful sky full of stars by night and coloured the brightest blue by day. The winds are a little lighter than we would hope but we are flying the spinnaker from daybreak to after sunset to keep our speed and days run up at a respectable number. We have managed 120NM over the last 25 hours, a good 15NM up on if we had just used our working sails. Last night we crossed 120W meaning the ships lock was adjusted one more hour backwards, leaving us now 9 hours behind the UK.

You may have noticed that the Captain is writing the blog today as Magpie is busying herself in the galley preparing lots of wonderful treats! She baked some more of her world famous cookies today that we took with tea as a little afternoon snack, these had some little chocolate pieces buried in the centre as an additional suprise! Now she is cooking tea ready for later so we can concentrate on dropping the spinnaker as late as possible. Tonight we are having a dish we have called “Ragu” which is a thick tomato sauce filled with whatever you have. This normally consists of carrot/squash and some cured meat like chorizo and maybe some sweet corn. Tonight’s is using up the last of a string of chorizo and we have made the first cut into a beautiful big pumpkin that our friends on S/V Viridian gave us as a gift before we all left Panama, we are very grateful for it!

We spotted a large (17m) sailing vessel last night south of us on AIS, this boat has remained about 8NM from us all day on a similar course. We were very surprised to see another vessel join this one today about 18NM north of us! Its getting very busy in the Pacific, I guess as we start to converge on the Marquesa Island’s!

Our head weather guru Nigel over in northern Greece has reported the 10 day forecast today as being mostly 12/15kt winds with a lighter patch of winds at the end of this week of maybe 8/10kts. The reason this is noteworthy is because this forecast if correct provides us sufficient wind to arrive on Hiva Oa before the end of the forecast period! If nothing changes we should keep moving at a fair speed and should arrive into French Polynesia next week! This has caused much excitement aboard!

Other than all these culinary treats and exciting thoughts of cold beer and land, life aboard has taken a normal pace on Hamble Warrior. Lots of reading and the odd episode here and there of Parks and Recreations interspersed with some chores to keep the boat tidy and moving. Sadly one of these chores still isn’t unhooking a plump shiny fish from our fishing line!

Hope everybody following us has had a good start to the week and we will have more news tomorrow!

Captain Jamie