So far this has been a delightful sail, a great time at sea. The wind took a few hours to appear yesterday, as we expected, but it's been steady, and steadily increasing, ever since. We moved smoothly through the night with single-reefed sails and no splashing, let me say that again: NO splashing of salty water over the boat or into the cockpit at all. How nice. We don't know whether to credit the sea-sickness medication for our comfort or the sea itself, but it's nice to be out here enjoying the passage. Today the seas are picking up -- we're seeing up to 10 feet at times now -- and we were only salt-free until this morning, with occasional wave-dousings over the bow this afternoon, but it was a great first night out. We even had lasagna! The down-side to not being seasick is that we want to eat everything in sight, Allan notes.

We have a route plan from our weather router Bob McDavitt, which I printed with spaces beneath to write the actual progress. We've used Bob in the past for several passages but I was never this organized. This time, I'm curious about the favorable current we're supposed to encounter, and whether we can "beat the flight plan" as pilots love to do. And so far, we are -- we're faster than anticipated and about 20 miles farther down track than planned at this time, so we're hoping to miss some of the rougher seas that were forecast in the squash zone, and get in to Brisbane around Thursday morning, a good 9 hours earlier than planned. The technical details: We clicked off 170 miles in the first 24 hours, seeing up to 8 knots at times. We're happy with how Fly Aweigh performs when she has good wind, even with partially reefed sails. In fact, sometimes she's happier reefed than with all the fabric out.

Allan's deep into the Harry Potter book I read on the last passage, mindful of the fact that the 7th movie is due out in a few weeks and he's a few behind. And I'm reading a book given to me by Martine, our friend in New Caledonia, a story based in Australia. We while away the blank hours contemplating the next phase of our lives, but of course, it's hard to imagine. How soon will the boat sell? Will the buyer want all our gear and junk or do we need to have continual yard sales in the marina parking lot? How much will we ship home? Where should we ship it? Do we rent a furnished flat in Brisbane, or stay aboard with a storage space nearby in which to sort through our things? Will we need a car? Should we rent one or buy a used one? What about insurance? And how much of my food will Customs take?

On that last point: Australia will be the toughest country so far where food regulations are concerned; I've been into Australia many times as a pilot and I know the rules, but this will be the first time I've had such so much food, and I'm anticipating losing about a quarter of it, despite careful planning to avoid this. I may be able to save the organic dried garbanzos if I pressure cook them and make hummus, and I could save the French green lentils, perhaps. But it's curtains for the Chilorio Mexican Beef, and the green peas, the raisins, the green powder I like to put in smoothies, and the raw walnuts and almonds I just can't use in the next 4 days. It's probably over for the 8 kinds of herb tea I brought, the brown rice, and of course, all the leftover veggies. So it goes.

Our goal at this point is to enjoy what we can of our last passage, and perhaps our last sail, aboard Fly Aweigh. Who could have guessed how fond we'd get of a chunk of fiberglass? A squeaky boat with little closets and a proclivity to avoid permanent addresses has become our home, our rock. "Home is where the hull is," a fellow cruiser says in his signature line, and that's been completely true for us. We'll transition from cruisers -- turtles with our shells on our backs, to little hermit crabs searching the beach for shelter, oh, a pitiful image! But sort of exciting, too. Who would have thought we'd be homeless in our 50's? And by choice, no less! The next phase is a completely blank slate, as we don't have to go back to work until next summer, and don't have a home to move back into until fall. How we came to be in this particular quandary is just the way things went once we decided to turn right instead of left. The left turn had a plan through to the end. This one, decided upon as an afterthought 10 months ago, doesn't. But if there's anything I've learned in this process, it's that there is a God. And for some reason, He's been awfully nice to us. Things have worked out against all odds repeatedly, and I have no reason not to believe that will continue.

By the way, I have no intent of closing out this blurb just because Phase One, "Jobless Airline Pilots Sail the Pacific" is ending, so if you choose to, check in with us and see how it goes in Phase Two, "Homeless Airline Pilots Roam Aimlessly."

But I'm getting ahead of myself. For now, we're not homeless, and in this moment, we're still in the South Pacific, a blue sky overhead and puffy clouds on the horizon, a brisk 15-20 knot wind, a fridge full of salad stuff, veggie lasagna, Meat Lovers pizza, Lentil Loaf, and Meat Lovers Pizza (go figure.) There are cold Cokes and that bag of m & m's, we have each other, and life is just very good.