Friday August 24th
\n2:00 P.M. local time
\nS 15 51
\nW 161 03
\nHeading 280 degrees
\nWinds 5-8 knots
\n125 miles to go!<\/p>\n
We are in our 4th day now of our 4.5 day sail to Suwarrow. We
\nexpect to arrive tomorrow morning (Saturday). Yesterday we had
\ngood wind for most of the day and sailed with our headsails
\npoled out – averaging about 7 nm per hour for most of the day.
\nAbout 4 p.m. a squall came up and brought some rain, followed by
\na drop in wind and a change in wind direction and after a couple
\nof hours of trying unsuccessfully to sail our course, we gave up
\nand motored for the night. It has not been the windiest sail,
\nbut at least it has been quite comfortable most of the time –
\nwith not much ocean swell at all. We have both been able to
\nsleep one six hour stretch each day followed by as many catnaps
\nas possible. Mark is not much of a napper, but I am really
\ngetting good at passing out for an hour or two at any hour of
\nthe day (talented girl that Laura). Today, Friday, we are
\ncontinuing to motor since the winds are still extremely light.<\/p>\n
Yesterday Mark caught another fish! We aren’t even sure what
\nkind it was – only what it was not. Being neither a tuna, a
\nwahoo, or a mahi-mahi- we are guessing it might have been a kind
\nof mackeral. Anyways it was really delicious – much better than
\nthe tuna we had caught two days before. And this morning I was
\nawakened at 7:00 a.m. by a loud cry of “Laura – get up – I’ve
\ngot two fish on the lines!”. Mark had just set out the two
\nfishing lines and within a minute both had been grabbed. One of
\nthem leapt clear out of the water and Mark could see that that
\nthey were large mahi-mahi – the premier fish that you want to
\ncatch out here. Unfortunately the bigger one bit the hook right
\noff the first line and disappeared. The second fish, however,
\nwas well snagged and Mark managed to reel him in and onto the
\nboat. It was quite big – maybe 25 or 30 pounds – and was such a
\nbeautiful fish. Once on board he (or she) was still thrasing
\naround and was very angry and before we could stun him, he
\nwiggled out of both the gaff hook and the hook in its mouth and
\nwriggled off the boat. Mark was so disappointed! I was
\ndisappointed, but also kind of relieved because it was such a
\nbeatiful big fish I hated to kill it.
\nWe are looking forward to arriving in Suwarrow tomorrow. It is
\nsupposed to be beautiful and it will be fun to be there with a
\nflotilla of boats that we know. Although there about 12 boats
\nwe know of that are sailing this route, we are all spaced out
\ntoo far from each other to really communicate except by the SSB
\n(single side-band radio), and we are doing a check in twice a
\nday. We have ended up sailing very close to another boat named
\nNadezka on the whole route. We have never met them in person,
\nbut since we are only about 20 miles from each other at sea, we
\nare able to talk on the VHF radio at any time. It has been fun
\nchecking in with them a few times – they even called us
\nyesterday to give us a heads up on the squall coming through –
\nas it passed by them before it reached us. They said that there
\nwas a 200 foot fishing boat just a few miles from them which was
\nquite a surprise as we have seen no commercial boats of any kind
\nout here.<\/p>\n
All is well here.
\nL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Friday August 24th 2:00 P.M. local time S 15 51 W 161 03 Heading 280 degrees Winds 5-8 knots 125 miles to go! We are in our 4th day now of our 4.5 day sail to Suwarrow. We expect to arrive tomorrow morning (Saturday). Yesterday we had good wind for most of the day and … <\/p>\n