日本に着いた！ Just under 12 days spent on the water. Excepting hurricanes, we experienced all possible conditions on this trip, the culmination of which was a final morning entering a mile-wide channel into Osaka Bay. Sea drogue notwithstanding (a sea drogue is like a parachute used to slow down drag racers, but underwater), we were still making 3+ knots with NO sails up. The wind was blowing 25 knots exactly behind us, 10-12 foot seas also from behind, and a tidal current was pulling us as well. I once counted 15 monstrous cargo, fishing, coast guard, and ferry boats surrounding us. Due to these factors we were well into the bay before the boat steadied enough that we were able to drop trou (phonetic spelling there) on the aft deck and have morning 'movements' into a bucket. (Sorry, Whitney. Blogging privileges revoked? I want it on the record that there was no anthropomorphizing in my account.) The entry past the breakwalls into the harbor was also tricky, but here we are. Suma Yacht Harbor. Seven officials from Customs, Immigration, and the Kobe Coast Guard greeted us, and I spent the next two hours re-acquainting myself with Japanese and learning anew the vast amount of technical marine bureaucratic jargon. My head is still reeling a bit from that, but it forced me to get my mind back into thinking in Japanese. I'm making an honest effort to use formal speech and avoid sounding like my former students when speaking with people I've just met. Curry udon, okonomiyaki, onigiri, chu-hai, daiginjo sake on the cheap, public transportation. I. LOVE. JAPAN.

Suma has given us a free week's stay while another typhoon approaches, but after that they want 15,500 yen per DAY (USD$150). Needless to say, we're exploring options for Rose elsewhere.

Oh! Rob caught a big mahimahi a few mornings before our arrival. Pat and I were still sleeping during his 5-7AM watch when we hear, "FISH!". We were unaware that we had started fishing again until that moment. Rob had decided that the fridge stocks of ahi and mahimahi were getting low and had the lures in the water for maybe an hour before getting the strike. That's efficiency. 20 knots of wind made the cleaning difficult, but at least Rob didn't stab himself with the filet knife this time.

Rob quote of the day: "I gotta tie something to something, cuz that's what I do." -said while walking around on deck, grasping a random 3-foot piece of rope