Let me get right to the interesting part: Yesterday we saw crew friction, if not dissention, and outright violence. It seems that Phil and John were preparing our dinner of baked beans and sliced hot dogs, and the question was raised of how many hot dogs to use. John suggested that five be cut up, but Davey, watching from the cockpit, insisted that eight be used. Phil, in blatent disregard of both of these suggestions, cut up an entire *ten* hot dogs. John was dumbfounded, and reminded Phil that we still had perhaps two weeks to go with the supplies on board, and he warned of the prospect of eventually having to eat canned tuna and chicken for every meal. His cries for moderation went unheeded, the dogs went into the beans, and all were consumed. Only time will tell if John’s dire warnings will come to pass. The psychic wounds, however, may never heal.
Other than that, things went fairly smoothly yesterday. We did break the jib furling line, so we dropped the sail on deck and raised the staysail for the night instead. This was a bit slower than we would have liked, but not too bad. Through the evening the wind slowly shifted towards the east, allowing us to sail closer to due north (we had slowly been forced to the west these last few days). At the moment we are sailing slightly to the east, and the forecasts tell us that this favorable trend will continue as we approach the Pacific High.
Around 6:00AM PDT this morning Davey and John saw the dim lights from another long-liner fishing boat. They slowly faded during Paul’s watch, never being more than a glow in the northern sky.
After sunrise we found a spare line to replace the jib furling line, and we are now sailing with reefed jib and reefed main, probably a knot faster than we had been with the smaller staysail. You can see in the attached Google Earth file where we turned and ran down-wind while we were repairing the furler (just before noon). The seas continue to subside, and the sailing is reasonably comfortable as we head north. Our position at 2:20PM PDT is latitude 33deg 57min N, longitude 159deg 06min W — about the same latitude as Marina Del Rey in Southern California. Our course is about due north, and our speed is about 6 knots.
The weather remains somewhat overcast, and the temperatures are gradually dropping. We can now sleep comfortably below, but the evening watch requires more than the shorts and t-shirts we had been used to. The wind and rain are less squally and more stable as we sail into these cooler waters.
One final thing I am reluctant to mention, but feel I should in the interest of completeness: The Captain’s bottle of Scotch seems to have “evaporated” quite a bit more than normal. The last time he had opened it was when he and Ville celebrated crossing the halfway point to Hawaii. Imagine his surprise when he looked at it and noticed it almost empty. Perhaps Daniel or Andrew have more information about this? As you may remember, there was a similar incident involving Bailey’s Irish Cream during the 2003 voyage.
Until Tomorrow,
VALIS

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