Well as I write this blog we have just 166 miles to go. Under almost any condition that puts us into Hiva Oa tomorrow afternoon. Unless I can convince Lisa to take a picture of landfall tomorrow and put it on the blog, there may not be one. She seems like a very happy camper today. Must be the knowledge we will be at anchor tomorrow. She just spotted our first bird in about a week and had to go outside and talk to it. Every time the bird flies bye she gets a great big grin on her face. Anchoring will be good.

We flew a single reefed main and no genoa or other sail through the night. When it broke daylight, I yanked out the genoa in a wing on wing configuration and we pushed our speed up to 6.5 knots. Wind has come up a little this afternoon and we are moving along now at between 7.5 and 8.5 kts on a Direct Down Wind ride. The wind is supposed to die off starting tomorrow so we want to make as much progress as possible.

I made an attempt to repair the asymetrical spinnaker we tore the other day. What I saw then was about a 6" horrizontal tear, but when I got it open on the deck this morning, there was another, which I hadn't seen when we took it down, that ran for about 6 feet vertical. Too much for mylar tape so will wait until we get to Pepeete in a few weeks to have it repaired. This afternoons project is to replace the torn chute with the lighter one in the dowsing sock.

We are getting down to the canned goods without having frozen foods to grab. We still had a chunk of smoked turkey breast that I cubed, added some potatos and corn, seasoned it up and made a Turkey Pot Pie. The pie dough turned out perfect but only by luck. We have a fantastic cook book called the "Cook's Companion". It is a cooking course and kitchen companion by Carole Clements. It has one drawback when it comes to things like pie, pastry and bread recipes. It gives measurement in weight for flower as opposed to volume, like cups. We have no scales on the boat so it is a WAG at what 1 1/2 lbs looks like in cups. I like her recipes but can't convert so had to improvise on the pie dough and got lucky. Likewise when I made the bread the other day, I ended up using the recipe from the bread machine book instead of the 'Cook's Companion'. Oh by the way, if you need to do that for bread, double the yeast, there is something about the confines of a bread machine that all ows it to rise with less yeast.

All for now. John & Lisa