Perfect Sailing

at least for awhile.

Just after our morning SSB radio sched with Soggy Paws in Indonesia and Cardea in Palau, we shook out our reef and were flying full canvas once more. This we hoped would move us at a pace more likely to get us to Ninigo in the near future. That must have been the move that our friends the wind gods had been waiting for.

The wind picked up to double digits and we took off flying in the bright sunshine. For about six hours we enjoyed shiny-magazine-perfect sailing with winds abeam. It was hard to wipe the smiles off our faces.

With the bright sun built convective clouds and by afternoon squalls began to form and we had to take back in that reef. The passing of a particularly wet one of our stormy friends shut down the sailing winds and left us slopping through chop and back to sedate sailing.

We can't complain, the stars are out and we're practicing memorizing more of them. Antares sparkled off to starboard in the SW in the constellation Scorpio with Mars and Saturn framing them. Spectacular.

Overnight we had a chat with the Jin Xia Feng, a cargo ship that was heading at us on an exact reciprocal course. All 229 m of him was headed straight for us at 11 knots. Thankfully we reached the watch officer and they altered course 10 degrees to port and passed 1.3 nm to starboard. Gotta love an AIS.

For those who think a blog should include what you are eating - our foodie has been busy and keeping us stuffed with wholesome goodies. Even the first night out, seasick, he prepped a chicken soup but succumbed to nausea and abdicated the galley for the swabby to do the denouement. For six days now, our fare has been a succession of one pot meals: chicken soup, beef stew and chicken stirfry, with leftovers of all. Mc-pumpernickel grilled egg and ham and cheese-wiches, omelets or cereals with dried fruit and tea for breakfast, and lunch snacks, when we have them, of mini-wiches of triscuits, cheese and salami (thank you for the triscuits Chuck & Ivy!). And then there has been popcorn, that soul-satisfying whole-grain munchie. So, there you go, our "blog" now includes our menu. Touche.

p.s. we haven't even broken into the cache of cabbage!


At 8/2/2016 and 19:35 UTC (GMT) our position was: 02°15.79'N / 140°52.15'E.
We were traveling 128T degrees true at 2.5 knots.





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