• Position and Time: N 20-34 by W 124-24 at 2155 UTC, 818 miles from San Diego
• Speed and Course: 6.0 knots, 210 degrees true, 1450rpm
• Wind: 12 knots at 150 degrees relative
• Waves: 6-8 foot swells at 10-12 seconds, 3-4 foot wind waves.

We are almost one third of the way.

The routine has pretty well set in. Doing watch, eating, sleeping, doing engine room checks, checking communications, etc. The obvious fact that we are about hundreds of miles from the nearest land (Mexico’s Guadalupe Island) occasionally comes to mind. The seas have picked up, and there is no doubt we are on the open ocean. We get a combination of a swell and wind wave about every minute or so gives us some strong roll, even with the stabilizers. We estimate these waves to be about 8 feet or so. Anything requiring moving around takes extra concentration and careful timing between rolls.

We are currently in the tropics, but you would never know it from the weather. We had a couple days of warm days with bright sunshine with scattered clouds earlier in the week, but it has reverted back to the gloomy gray and cold that we had the first three days out.

None of us aboard have been on a passage this long, as few people can say they have aboard a small powerboat. So honestly we are not sure how we are going to feel as the passage continues. Ready for land? Sure. Crazy? Dunno. Exhausted or rested? It is hard to say at this point.

We have the paravane poles out, but we have not put out the stabilizing “fish” (search the site for paravanes for more info on them). We are in following seas, which means the waves are going our direction. The paravanes do a nice job in such conditions, so we are considering deploying them. The only catch is they cost some speed, so it is a tradeoff of speed or less roll.

Speed is related to our range. The latest calculations give us a total conservative range of about 3700 nm. We need to make it about 2900 for this passage. We are burning about 1.8 gallons an hour at 1450rpm and averaging about 5.6 knots. We did 135 miles the other day. We tried running at 1500 for bit, but 1450 appears to be a sweet spot. We would be happy with a bit more speed, and thankfully we are now getting pushed more by the seas and wind, and our speed has been closer to 6 knots. We have had between 12-18 knots pushing us. We will see how we do in the next 24 hours. We are predicted to have favorable weather.

We put out a fishing line for several hours. It is a “hand line”, which is pretty much a rope with a lure at the end. Alas we have not caught a fish yet, but we will keep trying.

Let’s see if we can answer some questions from the blog”¦

Jaime, we got a Bauer Jr. II dive compressor driven by an AC motor, so it requires we run the generator to operate it. We can fill to 3200 psi with our current setting. We have steel 80 liter tanks which nicely fit vertically in the laz. We look forward to diving with you!

Damien (and Jaime), we plan to be in Australia Oct/Nov, hopefully for about 1 month. We will likely arrive in Cairns and move north from there. We hear there is a small reef in the area with some diving along Australia. ☺

Someone had a picture of our pilothouse. We will have to get you an up to date pilothouse photo. A few things have been updated. One notable cosmetic change is the Stidd chair. In that picture is has a black back. It now is matching red. The black did not look bad, but we decided on the matching color. The helm chair is really nice, but it is the single most jaw dropping expensive item relative to what it is on the options list for the boat. We tried a few different chairs and almost did not get one. But we are glad we got the Stidd. We added a few more items to the panels. A current picture would reveal a water maker control, Ethernet/USB port, and a 7 inch Furuno unit. And all we can say about the 43 is we think it is wonderful boat.

Just when we thought we were not going to see another ship, we saw one. Another night sighting, and she got with 8 miles of us. We really can only “see” about 12 miles out with the radar. AIS goes maybe about 12 miles as well. Then, amazingly, this morning we saw 2 more ships. One was quite big, 294 meters long, the other about 150 meters! They were close together with only 2 miles separating them. The AIS said closest point of approach to us was 0.3 miles to the “smaller” one. But both changed course to give about 2 miles of space. Believe it or not based on our position, we had the right of way. While we have heard of the “law of tonnage” out here and expect to have to dodge some big guys, this time we did not have to change course. We called them on the radio to confirm they were changing course because of us, and they said they indeed saw us and would give us a couple miles. The person on the radio had a Russian accent and was very courteous. We wished them a pleasant trip. Quite the traffic jam out here! We are really glad for the AIS to help sort out the names of the vessels.

People may be wondering what we are eating. We are stocked to the hilt with a large variety of things we both like to eat, ranging from ready to eat, easy to prepare, and ingredients for more elaborate meals. On this trip we have solely been eating the ready to eat and the super easy to prepare items. We are eating a lot of fresh fruit, bread, eggs, yogurt, peanut butter, almond butter, and frozen foods.