Enough Already

0800 Position 18-11N 125-41W. Days run 185 miles.

Van Diemen is still powering south in smooth seas and no wind. I have never seen the ocean this calm for this long. We are all anxious to go sailing. It is hard to believe that we are almost 1000 miles into this passage and have been under power for more than 2/3 of it.

Our email communications system is working well enough for us to get daily grib files that contain our weather forecasts. It looks like another day or so of powering before the northeast trade winds fill in.

Temperatures continue to increase as we get south. Yesterday it was shorts and t-shirts on deck and last night I was shoeless and only had on a single sweatshirt.

Longy drew the short straw on cooking last night, but he had the fresh aku he caught to work with. He made a nice lemon-butter-caper aku with wild rice that was onolicious.

I've known Longy since we sailed against each other in J-24s in Hawaii in the early '80s. He left the state shortly thereafter to pursue a career as a professional yacht racer, boat captain, and yacht commissioning expert. He is the most knowledgeable person I know on the installation, operation, maintenance and troubleshooting of the complex systems found on modern yachts. He is also an always good natured and interesting guy. I look forward to our two hour overlap every watch cycle when I am on watch and he is on standby. I always hear some funny and interesting sea stories and we are sharing a lot of laughs.

Last night when Rob and I were on duty we tried to determine how many days we'd been at sea now. We figured it out by recalling the meals that we've had. "Let's see. There was the soup that Renee prepared for us the first night, the chicken dinner, the spaghetti dinner, quesadillas, steak, and fish. That's six dinners so we've been five full days at sea." Don't let a sailor tell you that food isn't important on a voyage.

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