The kids are settling into her school work, and we spent much of yesterday on lessons. Sophie and I are getting some nice bonding time as I am her primary teacher. While early on she protested school, she is now starting to enjoy it. In addition to the home school curriculum we have started studying astronomy. Finn is also taking an interest in the stars. After some protesting, Finn worked on his math with Christine. Freya is re-engaging in her reading and spent time reading me her Bob books. For recess we played switchboard and Yahtzee, I am starting to sneak in some probability theory with Sophie. We must have both been over thinking the game because Finn creamed us. It was a really fun day with the kids.

Despite it being a small boat we can still misplace things. We had spent several hours over the last two days looking for Sophie's school novel, Shiloh. I had searched each book shelf at least twice, removing most of the books, and Christine had done the same. Sophie had searched her he kids' shelf as well. I had become convinced that we had left it somewhere in Hilo, and given Sophie's enjoyment of the book, I was had suspicions as to how this could have happened. Yesterday I asked Freya, our finder, to look. Within 5 minutes she found it on the kids' shelf which three of us had gone over multiple times. My only explanation is that the authors name is more prominent on the spine than the title. Maybe we are more tired than I think.

Last night we started to feel the effects of the ITCZ. We saw a smallish squall on the radar, and started trying to maneuver to avoid it. There was no lightning, but we didn't feel like getting drenched and could do without the erratic wind shifts the dark clouds would bring. No matter which way we turned it seemed to be on a collision coarse, so we shortened sail and braced ourselves. The "squall" turned into a full rainstorm that stayed with us for over 2 hours, and killed our wind. It is hard to keep the sails from banging when the wind clocks around 360 degrees in 30 seconds every ten minutes. We motored for about 12 hours overnight to try to quickly get through the disturbance. The ITCZ is further north than usual, hopefully we will be through it well before the Equator. If we have to motor extensively, Christmas Island is not far off our coarse where we can refuel, though Christine would prefer to push through to Samoa. (I am hoping to stop and see an isolated island.)

This morning I had to re-repair our electronic autopilot. Our Monitor is still working like a champ (touch wood), but it requires somewhat steady wind to steer. As we expect light and variable winds near the Equator we may be using the electronic Autohelm more in the coming days. I started the trip with a fully functional unit in good condition, and worn, but functional, spare. The primary unit had an unfortunate accident near San Francisco. I repaired it with parts from an older spare unit, and now my electronic autopilot is literally held together with Super Glue, an old drill bit for a shaft pin, and electrical tape to water seal it. One of the challenges of being at sea is having to figure out how to make repairs with only the materials at hand - I enjoy these tests, though I fear I have not made the last repair on this unit. As my model has been out of production for a few years, a replacement may have to come through EBay, one of the realities of going to sea in a 25 year old boat.