32:12.88S

174:02.80E

175 miles to go

5am Sunday

So, I guess that’s progress.  The weather didn’t behave exactly as “promised”; yesterday was a bit rougher than forecast but the last few hours have been calm again.  We have been motoring since 2200 (10pm) Thursday night which is 55 hours to now at 5am Sunday.  Up to now, on the whole trip, we had only motored 300 hours, including all the time we used the motor to charge on the trips to Hawaii and Fiji. I have been on watch under a beautiful sky; full moon with such a black sky that many stars are also simultaneously visible.  Even though Eric Clapton is drowning out some of the motor, the magic if we were sailing, is not there.

One sobering lesson about the dolphin experience; as I said, I was jumping and hollering on the deck, but neither the person sleeping in the cockpit or those down below, heard me over the motor.  This focuses one on the chance of alerting someone if you falloff.

I just read an update on weather, that says we may get heavy seas today, but from the east, which is better than the southerlies we have been getting.

We are fortunate to have 900 litres of fuel capacity.  We have drained one 300 litre tank, are halfway through the 350 litre tank, and have another 250 litres.  Some of the boats that had been motoring have returned to sailing because of fuel concerns.

Last night we had vegy chili and spaghetti.  Thom and Robert seem to continue to improve.

And lastly, I seem to have trouble counting.  My last watch last night ended at 10pm.  While in my cabin, I counted out the 6 hours to my next watch and dressed and reappeared in the cockpit at 2am; except , as Thom pointed out, it was Bruce’s watch.  I was not due up until 4am.  As Thom said, “ I was just keen”.  So, back I went to my cabin, undressed and went to bed, again.  This time I reappeared   half hour late, but Bruce, whose watch I had tried to snafu, was understanding.

The Kiwis (New Zealanders) are very strict about importing food stuffs and we hear and read that all fresh, frozen, and refrigerated food must be forfeited.  I have great difficulty understanding the other boaters on the radio; the SSB is staticy (lots of static) anyway, but the combination with the Kiwi accent makes for Herculean efforts at understanding and lots of spelling in  phonetics a la ‘alpha, bravo, Charlie, etc’

Subject to weather, expect arrival 27 hours, ie Monday morning 8am

babelfish