Day 297, Year 1: Winging Our Way to American Samoa
Date: Thursday, August 10, 2006
Weather: Blue Skies and Sunny; E Winds12-18
Latitude: 15 degrees, 13 minutes S
Longitude: 169 degrees, 34 minutes W
Passage from Rarotonga to American Samoa, Day 6
Location: Miles to Go: 85 (out of 747)

We are winging our way to American Samoa. The weather is really holding for us. The winds have come around a bit to the south of east which is making it possible for us to maintain our course sailing wing and wing. Arrival time right now is projected to be around noon. Just after we made the decision yesterday to sail and not start the engines, the wind picked up and we have made good time since then. We are averaging about 5 knots-not great, but not shabby.

Life aboard today has consisted of reading, and reading, and reading. I’m trying to finish Bounty by Caroline Alexander, an author from New Hampshire. Mark finished the Nelson DeMille book and has moved on to Grisham’s The King of Torts. Linda brought a few books for us, but we are going to need our son Justin and my niece Lynn to bring more reinforcements. We have lots of non-fiction books aboard, but night watch reading requires good historical fiction or “high interest” fiction to keep us going.

The weather window for this trip has been perfect and we heard this morning on the net that there is now another 5-6 window for other cruisers out there to move west. There are about 40 boats underway right now, mostly from Bora Bora to the Cooks Islands and Samoa or from Niue to Tonga. We are the only boat on the Rarotonga to Samoa route right now, but we will meet with those coming from Bora Bora. Should be fun!