Day 12, Year 2: Fourth Day of Passage from New Zealand to Fiji
Date: Sunday, May 6, 2007
Weather Today: Mostly cloudy, Winds SE 25 Knots
Temperature: Air 68 degrees F; Water 68 degrees F
Latitude: 28 degrees 05 minutes S
Longitude: 174 degrees 45 minutes E
Miles to Go: 648
Location: Passage from New Zealand to Fiji
Good news. That low that has had us worried is currently staying at 180 on the Dateline for now. We are between 174 and 175 E and by the time it moves to this area on Thursday, we will be well north of it. That means we shouldn’t get the heavy winds above 30 knots. However, the beautiful conditions we had yesterday were a one day affair. We are still sailing at about 6.5 knots, but with winds in the 20 to 30 knot range. That means the seas have kicked up so it is not a smooth ride, but it is certainly safe. The latest weather report tells us that we will have a thick cloud cover from here on to Fiji and will probably have rain once we get there. We got our first squall on my watch around midnight last night and will continue to get occasional squalls with rain, but nothing terrible. The water and air temperature are getting warmer, but with the cloud cover, it actually feels cooler. So far the water and air temps have increased by about two degrees per day.
Last night at about sunset, we had more unexpected bird visitors. Other boats were reporting the same. Last night’s visitors were Saddlebacks, but as dark descended, they flew away. There’s not much else to report. I’ll finish a Tom Clancy book tonight (I’m deep into the Middle East). Mark finished reading Dava Sobel’s The Planets and is now reading a Robert Ludlum book, The Ambler Warning. Clancy, Ludllum, Grisham, and DeMille books are great for passage. Alan Kanegsberg left The Planets for Mark to read and he really enjoyed it. Sobel has an interesting way of interweaving mythology, science, astrology, and current space exploration. I’ll wait until we are in Fiji to read that one as I need to start reading about Fiji.
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| 070506 Day 12–Passage to Fiji 4th Day |
Great book choices … I didn’t see Stephen Coonts on your list ? You might want to add him! Great books, I’ll guarantee you’ll like his writings.
Cool, I learned about a new bird today. I hadn’t even heard of Saddlebacks before, so I got out our New Zealand book. We’re going there in November to mid December ’07. It looks like the saddlebacks live on outpost islands, so you guys may have gotten a look a bird that we will never see. But we’ll try.
hope your trip continues well. Eric and I spent our 35 anniversary in Suva Suva. It was rainy and foggy for the 4 days we were there. Hope you get better weather. Patsy