Blog from Family Affair

by Paul Michael, July 21st, 2012

Not much to report on today. The trades threw us a few curve balls.  We're less than a day out and have more of our game faces on.  Focused on the finish, we play the squalls as best we can.  After a big squall, the easterly trades are reduced to sometimes zero wind and take hours to fill back in.  We seem to be averaging around 6 knots towards Lahaina which would put us in early Sunday morning.   It would have been nice for a daylight finish.  I have to be careful what I wish for; there are plenty of chances for calm weather ahead.

For the first time in 12 days, we saw another ship on the horizon.  It was only navigation lights and passed over the horizon behind us.  From the Yellowbrick information, it was Anne Bonny.

The weather's great and it's given us a chance to a major cleaning of the boat.  It's nice to air everything out.  Things are becoming ship shape.

I found that yesterday's communications issues were likely due to the high voltage cable falling off from the HF antenna.   I reattached it and was able to connect back to the States.

At dusk, we had an albatross circle very close to the boat.  It finally built up enough confidence to land on the top of our mast.  He didn't seem to affect our instruments so we left him alone and he rested there for hours through calms and squalls.

We've seen a few other birds too, terns mostly.  One was very interested in my fishing lure this morning.  We've been sailing too slow to troll for the tuna I was hoping to get. 

EDITORS NOTE: Hide the rum indeed! I thought rum was the only reason for racing across vast oceans.

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