Day 13 at sea

We have had another weather eventful 24 hours. The convergence zone has kicked up alot of wind and a little rain (although none on my watch.) Winds gusting nearly to 30 knots. Right when I came on my watch last night at 11pm, the wind picked up so strongly that I had to manually steer the boat for nearly an hour--which means I can't simply sit and zone out. Even this morning, as I write this, it is grey and blustery outside.

We are 988 NM from Honolulu and making decent time. We did have some slow stretches during the day yesterday. As I mentioned earlier when are shooting for 120 NM per day. However, our line is not perfectly straight. For example, last night when the wind was so strong, I had to head the boat almost due west (270 degrees) to settle things down (off our course of 320 to Honolulu). We already had rolled up our jib sail. The remaining tricks to handle the weather would be to put another 'reef' in the main sail which means shortening it by rolling about a foot or so of it to the boom--the big pole that the sail is attached to that attaches at the bottom of the mast perpendicularly. Anyway, it is a big deal to reef the main in high winds so we lucked out.

We are having a tiny leak--don't panic--from the deck into the aft cabin. What that means it our second sleeping spot is getting wet and not fun to sleep in. Therefore, we need to use our windward settee berth--the one on the up-side of the heeling boat. What that means is that anyone sleeping in that berth will roll off without some support. We use something called a lee cloth to hold us from rolling off the berth. Kind of like a big sling. More new stuff.

Yesterday we saw 8 dolphins that were of a different species than the others we had seen--Risso's dolphin. Was darker and had a bullnose.

This morning the birds are out in force. Who said siting birds means that land is near? We have seen birds a thousand miles from land. Saw a tropical seabird this morning with a big long tail. We are having a hard time actually figuring out exactly which birds we are seeing because it is really hard to steady the binoculars to get details.

cooking report: I hate to admit it. I caved into having leftovers for dinner last night--and it was a really nice break!

More from the rolling seas tomorrow.