Moku pe'a Report

0600 position 0-00S 158-00W, 124 miles from Christmas Island

Rocky had hoped to find a hotel lounge type bar in London, a posh air
conditioned place with an entertaining bartender and Billy Joel clone
playing piano in the corner. When that didn't pan out, he searched high
and low, but there was nary a lemon or lime to be found in London town.
Depressed that his planned cocktail hour would now be both relegated to
the boat and lacking a vital ingredient to make it a success, he was
rummaging through the liquor locker and stumbled upon the booze lei that
Lori gave us as departure gifts. In them he found two mini bottles of
limon rum and two cans of tonic. Limon rum tonics were produced to
enhance the sunset watching, and they were good., and we didn't even miss
the limes, and Lori saved the day..

Rocky and I were anxious to be on our way, so after a great breakfast of
scrambled eggs and hot dogs, that Rocky had purchased in London the day
before, we launched the dinghy and headed in to shore to officially check
out of the country at 0800. There was only one minor problem, none of the
three full time customs officers was in the office at 0830 when I finished
with the Prell/Immigration lady. Were there any planes or ships arriving
or departing today? No. "Well, it IS Friday…", she offered as
justification. After watching me wait for an hour, the tax lady in the
next office drove to the closest customs officer's home and retrieved him
to check us out. This was probably a pretty good shakedown for what we
will experience in the Cook Islands and Tonga, also third world countries,
so I need to get comfortable with it. As Lori likes remind me when I
start to get worked up over things like this, "Remember, this is not your
country and you are a guest. They do things differently than we do in the
US." True. True. When I returned to the dinghy after being gone for
almost two hours Rocky just laughed and said, "I figured somebody you
needed to see wasn't there."

Just to further cement Christmas Island's third world status, sailors
should note that all charts of the island are out of position by
approximately ½ mile. Our GPS chart plotter had us anchored in the middle
of downtown London.

At 1030 the anchor was up and we had a delightful sail along the eight
mile long western edge of the atoll and into the open ocean. The forecast
showed easterly winds from eight to fourteen knots all the way to
Suwarrow. That's pleasant sailing with the wind just aft of the beam, and
so far that is what we have seen.

I hadn't even finished putting out a hand line just after setting sail
when a fish hit threatening to pull it out of my hand. No hook up though.
I'm not sure how things would have turned out if we had hooked up.
Unfortunately, we've seen no action at the lures since then other than a
few diving birds.

We just crossed the equator a couple of minutes ago. The damn thing got
caught on the keel as we sailed over it, but we managed to quickly free
ourselves without slowing down. I can see King Neptune approaching the
boat now, and he doesn't look happy…