Timelessness

'Sarf & West mate, Sarf & West'
Pete Bernfeld
Mon 10 May 2010 18:17
06:43.092S 118:28.712W
Position at 1800 UTC 10/05/10
Daily run 156.5nm
We slowed the boat down yesterday afternoon and overnight to catch up on sleep, hence the slightly slower daily run. A decrease of 0.5kt in boat speed really does make quite a difference to the noise ledvels in the cabins and the amount of bouncing around.
The voyage now has a sort of time-less quality about it which I've noticed occuring on the previous two Atlantic crossings. It's when you've been at sea for 12 days or so and stop thinking quite so much about how far you've got to go and how long it's going to take and focus more on each day as it comes, noting almost in passing that you're getting closer to the destination.
Talking of destinations, we still haven't finally decided on whether or not we're going to go to Fatu Hiva first for a couple of days and then check in at Hiva Oa or go straight to the latter to complete the formalities, it'll depend on what sort of reception the boats that have gone to Fatu Hiva first got. If everybody (or the majority) got fined then we'll skip Fatu Hiva and go straight to Hiva Oa. There's no reall difference in distance and we don't have to decide until about 180nm from Hiva Oa (so about 26/7 hours before we arrive). At the moment arrival somewherer on the 18th still looks on the cards.
The chicken and bean stew was OK last night, the bread so-so. I cooked it on the hob (in a pan, DOH!) instead of in the oven, using a recipe I got from a book called 'How to Sail around the World, by Hal Roth). I needed to reduce cooking time by about 5 minutes a side, but it wasn't bad for all that, just a little 'crunchy'.
I now know that one of the positions on the Google map was entered incorrectly, I'll correct it when I can connect to the internet. In the meantime all continues to be well on board.