The Unluckiest Fish in the World

0800 Position 13-44N 129-04W. Days run 213 miles.

By 9AM yesterday the wind had clocked around to the east to the point that we could sail closer to our destination on the other tack, so we jybed to port tack and set the spinnaker. Our speed increased a couple of knots and we were able to head almost directly towards the Marquesas. It was a nice change from sailing forty degrees off course as we had the day before. All day long we surfed as the wind slowly increased until just before sunset when we took the spinnaker down to sail more conservatively. None of us was interested in getting up at 2AM to deal with a problem in the dark. The top speed for the day was thirteen knots. It was blowing hard enough when we took the spinnaker down that we hardly slowed down at all. Van Diemen is a pretty slippery boat.

Rob got up for his morning watch yesterday and found a dead flying fish sitting pretty as you please on the galley counter next to the sink. He figured that one of us had picked it up off of the deck and put it there as a joke, but when he looked more closely he could see where it had left scales and scum as it came through the just cracked open hatch above the galley and bounced off of the bulkhead on its way to the counter. We've seen a bunch of flying fish over the past couple of days, but that was the first malolo to come aboard the boat. It was a one in a million shot, and a very unlucky fish.

The whole crew has had a chance to cook our evening meal now, and it was my turn again last night. I didn't want to be the first to do a repeat, so I used the last of our fresh aku to make mac-n-cheese with tuna and a nice salad. Not very exotic but edible and filling.

There is a lot of reading going on as the job list gets shorter and we settle down into a routine. "The Adventures of Chas from Tas", the life story of a sailing peer of Rob's, is being passed around. Longy is reading historical fiction Mike, a book about Captain Cook, Bill, a Michael Crichton novel, and I'm just finishing up the first "Game of Thrones" novel that my daughter Kendra loaned to me.