7tb Sept - Day 7

SY Saphir -
Jeff & Doreen
Thu 8 Sep 2022 04:25
7th Sept - Day 7

13:46s 169:03w

A noon to noon of 163nm today which is about 6.8knots. That magic target of a 7 knot average seems hard to achieve however when I checked at 03.00 when I was on watch we had averaged 7.1 since noon the previous day so I am going to blame the 1st mate who came on watch at 06.00 and did not shake out the reefs and put her foot down!!

The winds have been down a bit today and hence our speed slightly but once again it has been a fantastic sailing day - I know I seem to keep repeating myself with that statement but sailing across the Pacific has been without doubt some of the best and most constant sailing I have ever done!

We have just passed some islands that I assume are a part of American Samoa called the Manu’a Islands. They were about 25nm to the south of us but we could see them incredibly clearly. We will pass between American Samoa and Samoa in the early hours of the morning and I noticed on my phone that they seem to have the same time (1 hr behind ourselves) but they are on different days. This is slightly confusing because we will not cross the date line until after Samoa so I would have thought they should have the same day. We have two hours difference between Fiji and ourselves at the moment but they are of course a day ahead. It takes a bit of getting your mind around the fact that when we cross the date line in the early hours of Friday morning suddenly it will be Saturday and we will be 12 hrs ahead of the UK!

Dinner is Vegetable Curry tonight as all of the fresh meat has gone so we are using up some of the fresh veg we have left. Fishing tomorrow as it looks like we might be a bit slower.

That is all for today. As I write this we have 880nm to go.

Cheers
Saphir