Day 185, Year 2: Fourth Day of Passage to Aussie Land
Date: Friday, October 26, 2007
Weather: Another Lovely Day of Sunshine and Calm Seas; Winds ENE 12-15 Knots
Latitude: S 23 degrees 47.887 minutes
Longitude: E 158 degrees 03.212 minutes
Location: On Passage to Australia

“The Red Sox totally creamed the Rockies last night … 13 to 1!!!” That was in an email from our daughter Heather this morning. My sister-in-law Sue and my sister Patsy also emailed the same. I call them the “Big Three” as they are always the first to email me important news, and the Red Sox in the World Series is definitely important. Thanks Heather, Sue, and Patsy.

We had another totally incredible twenty-four hours of sailing today. We have not had to turn on the engine since leaving Noumea except for charging the batteries, so to this point, this is the best passage we have had in recent memory. The seas are calm, the winds are light but steady, and we are making great time sailing wing and wing. Out mainsail is vanged out to port and our headsail is poled out to starboard. It would great if things would stay this way all the way, but maybe that is too
much to ask for. We reached the half-way point in our passage at 4:05 AM this morning, so even if we have to motor the rest of the way, we are happy. We thought we might have to motor most of the way due to the predicted winds of less than ten knots. I don’t know where they are, but I hope they stay away from us!

We are still within VHF contact with Jason and Laurel on Monkey’s Business and Ross and Laura on New Dawn. They can’t hear each other, but we are in between and can hear both and relay for them. Jason and Laurel are from Colorado, so we had to fill them in on the World Series. They didn’t know the Rockies were in it, so we will have fun relaying scores to them–scores that will hopefully be in our favor, not theirs. When we talked to Scot Free II and Ranger this morning, Scot Free was fairly
close to us but having to motor to keep up their desired speed. Ranger had sailed yesterday, motored for about six hours during the night, but were going to try and sail again today. We won’t know how that went until tomorrow morning, but neither Scot Free or Ranger seem to have the same winds that we have. Their winds are lighter and more variable. We had a positive current today of one to two knots as we went through a pass between two relatively shallow areas. We weren’t aware of this “pass”,
but Ross on New Dawn informed us of why we were enjoying the increased speed. The favorable current is still with us, but not sure how long it will last.

I spent my waking hours today catching up on correspondence and cleaning the dinghy. We carry the hard-bottomed dinghy on deck with the bottom side up. There were some waterline stains that I needed to clean and tomorrow I will apply the UV protectorant. It is important to get the dingy and outboard cleaned before we arrive in Australia. Their quarantine laws require anything that has come in contact with salt water to be thoroughly cleaned before arrival so as not to bring in unwanted organisms.
That includes engine water filters and salt water systems for the heads.

Some boats in the Port to Port Rally have already arrived, but only a few. If we arrive on Monday, I think we will be in the “top ten” of boats arriving. Mark spent his day working on brain teasers that the rally issued as part of a contest. He got them all but one. Here’s the one he is stuck on: “A knight wanted to visit a princess. He had to arrive at exactly 17h00. If he traveled at exactly 15 km per hour, he would arrive one hour too early. If he traveled at 10 km per hour, he would
arrive one hour too late. At what time did he leave? What distance did he travel? At what speed would he travel?” Don’t email us your ideas as that would be cheating, but enjoy the challenge.

As I prepare to send this log I looked over the stern of the boat and saw a beautiful full moon creeping above the horizon. It should be another beautiful overnight sail.