SV Delos

110 miles to go until land fall! We're estimating 3PM tomorrow to reach the straits. The winds were light and their direction unfavorable so we started motoring at about 6AM and continued through most of the day until about 5:30 when the wind finally shifted and came up. Motoring wasn't unwelcome today. Except for the noise the boat is upright so walking around is easier. Also, now that we're further north it's getting cold enough to want a heater. The main diesel heater has some issues so we can't use that, however there is an auxiliary heater run off the engine heat (just like a car) that works great.

The weather was mostly sunny for the first time in a few days which drew us out the aft deck to catch some sun. We were visited by two pods of porpoises today. Both of these pods were much more active than the ones we saw a few days ago. We estimate the pod size to be 16-18 and a mix of adults and juniors. The largest looked to be 8 feet while the smallest was around 4 feet. All were very playful and zoomed in and out of our bow wave for almost 20 minutes. The larger ones were more curious and would swim parallel to the boat and roll on their sides to get a better look at us. The smaller ones were focused on seeing how close they could cut in front of our bow. You could tell they really enjoyed the bow wave. We're guessing it's something to do with the pressure caused by the wave.

When they weren't playing at the bow they were jumping and surfing waves. You could see them speed up under the crest of a wave. As soon as the wave began to break they would launch themselves out of the face, often getting their bodies completely out of the water. I also spotted the first land bird since Hawaii. Definitely a sign of our proximity to land.

Our provisions are getting a little low on fresh food but we still have plenty of canned and dry goods remaining. We have resorted to mostly canned soups, sauces, and some of the frozen food we have left. Amazingly we still have romaine lettuce, a few eggs, and some lunch meat and cheeses left. The lunch meat is suspect to me but Kurt had a sandwich yesterday and he seems to be ok. No thanks .. I bet we could go another week before we would really have to start scrounging. We would run out of coffee for sure, which is a dietary staple for the early watches. We're down to a few 6-packs of soda (we had 10 flats originally). Amazingly we still have some beer left. We attribute this to the colder and rougher weather for the last half of the trip. It's hard to drink beer when walking to the fridge is an adventure!

The wind finally filled in just before dinner so we turned off the engine and set sails. Hopefully we'll be able to sail through the night and still maintain our direction and wind speed. Anticipation of getting home is growing as the miles shrink!