(With Bob Hope and Bing Crosby)
Actually, it’s still just the four of us onboard VALIS, but we are rolling along pretty well ourselves.
Right now (July 13, 3:42PM PDT) we are at latitude 25deg 59min N, longitude 145deg 38min W. We are sailing 255deg true, at over 7 knots directly towards Oahu.
Today we have seen hundreds of flying fish, many in large schools. They take off in front of VALIS, and glide for up to a hundred feet, sometimes dipping into the water briefly and then flying off again.
The wind has definitely picked up, and our daily runs show it. Here are the 9:00AM to 9:00AM totals for VALIS:
July-05 – 156 NM (this is a less-than-24 hour run)
July-06 – 180 NM (our fastest day so far)
July-07 – 161 NM
July-08 – 162 NM
July-09 – 179 NM
July-10 – 157 NM
July-11 – 110 NM
July-12 – 107 NM (our slowest day so far)
July-13 – 153 NM
If the curent conditions hold, the July 14th run will be very nice. It is starting to look like we will be arriving in Oahu within 5 days (July 18).
Yesterday we saw a large ship on the horizon, but it never came close enough for identification. We have passed floating barrels, buckets, plastic fishing floats,a telephone pole (?!) and various unidentifiable junk. He haven’t hit any of it, though. We did pass a large red “X” floating on the surface, and we are wondering what spot it was marking. We noted the position, in case we want to check it out later.
Our squall training is continuing. We watch them approach, and depending on which side of they will pass we either get lots of wind, or we get a lot less wind. In any case, the wind usually shifts, and we often get rain as well. The humidity and temperature are both rising as we approach Hawaii, and with the rain we are having a hard time drying anything we have washed.
For dinner last night we had salad and chicken “enchiladas” (in quotes, because they are only marginally like traditional enchiladas). They were declared quite tasty, in any case.
See our recent track with the attached google-earth trackfile.
Aloha,
VALIS and her slightly damp crew.

valis-jul13.kmz