• Position: N 24-27.32, W 121-57.12 at 2322 UTC on May 2, 2007 (549 nautical miles from San Diego).
• Speed and direction: 5.9 knots, 210 degrees true.
• Wind: Wind 15 knots 150 degrees relative,
• Waves: 6 foot swells, 10-12 seconds. Wind waves 1-2 feet. 1016.7mb.

Our route to Nuka Hiva is almost a straight line, but not quite. This morning we altered course slightly to 210 degrees true. Our next way point is N19-30.67 by W 125-04.60, which we expect to reach in about 60 hours. In case you have not noticed
our latitude gets lower as we get closer to the equator, and our longitude gets larger as we progressively move west. Eventually we will cross the equator and our latitude will switch to South and the latitude will get larger. On this trip we will get to West 140 degrees.

We have been using quite a bit of fresh water; it is a good thing we can make it with the water maker. We actually have 2 water makers. One is a 400 gallon per day unit that runs off the AC power from the generator. The other is a 160 gallon per day unit that can run off DC power which is generated from the main engine. There is no reason to run the generator so we have been using the DC water maker. Both operate via high pressure reverse osmosis. We try to conserve water, since making water costs diesel fuel. However we are taking showers and generally using water in a way that would terrify mariners of old. We have 60 gallons isolated for emergency.

Time is moving at an odd pace. There have been lots of sleep, and lots of doing nothing. Day watches are really easy; night watches are a bit more difficult. We have watched some pre-recorded TV showsand movies, and done a lot of reading. While the seas aren’t too bad, it is certainly much too rough for Christi to scrapbook.

We saw a ship named “Jervis Bay” on April 30th on a night watch (0520 local time) about 7.5 miles away. That was our last contact, and honestly we do not expect to see another vessel until we get much closer to Nuka Hiva. You may ask how we could read the name of a ship at night from over 7 miles away. Turns out all ships over 300 tons are supposed to broadcast their name and navigation info through a system called Automatic Information System (AIS). And we happen to have a handy dandy receiver for it which displays the info right on our radar screen. Alas we did not splurge and get the transmit unit, but hey the second watermaker was about the same price as the transmit unit, so water won.

We wanted to thank everyone for the well wishes. They mean a lot. With our limited remote capabilities, we are unable to send photos. Photos will wait until we are on land. It is also tricky to respond to blog postings in the blog itself, so we will try to answer questions people have in subsequent posts. We are using a combination of Iridium satellite phone and sailmail.

We are probably spoiling you all with these daily updates. Don’t worry if we do not send one, we probably are busy relaxing. But if anything interesting happens, like big weather changes, white whale sightings, or psychos rowing up to our boat, you can be sure we will let you know.