south of Hilo. Day's run 147 miles.
At 920AM we were sailing along on a broad reach under full sail when Tony
called down below to me, "I think we may want to put in a reef before this
squall hits." By the time I got on deck, it had hit, and hit hard. As we
reefed the main and rolled the jib the wind stayed one step ahead of us,
and within ten minutes we had three reefs in the mainsail and just a scrap
of a jib up. The wind was well over thirty knots, and then it started
raining. We were both worried that the bimini was going to blow right off
of the boat. The squall lasted for an hour before it finally decided to
move on. That was one of the biggest and ugliest squalls I've ever sailed
through. It was surprising considering the benign conditions before and
after.
Otherwise it has been pleasant sailing, close reaching along in about ten
knots of wind. We've had to deal with occasional smaller squalls and had
to roll up the jib a bit in the midst of them, but nothing too bad. The
wind has slowly backed from south of east to just north of east as
forecast, and we've fallen off a bit and are headed more or less directly
north.
The King of Squalls had come through right in the middle of my morning off
watch and interrupted my sleep, so I was tired and grumpy all day. Tony
gave me some relief by cooking a great dinner and sending me to bed half
an hour early. I woke up at midnight completely refreshed, and decided to
reward his generosity by baking a batch of triple chocolate brownies
during the midnight watch. Tony is a good man, and likes both chocolate
and the BeeGees.
Early last evening we sailed past Caroline Island thirty eight miles to
the west. There aren't any more islands between here and Hawaii so it's
open ocean the rest of the way.
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