beautiful sailing conditions. pleasant climate. good companions. a locker full of canned foods and a cooler that still reveals every day a fresh food that had been neglected or forgotten. the zip-lock of crisp rhubarb is my ace in the hole. sourced at the Saturday market at Kapiolani Community College in Honolulu two days before we set sail, it contains all the promise of a tart crunch which raw fish bones and deMonte's best peas cries out to embrace. do we only think about food? not at all. but that is the only subject we can discuss politely.

our real problem - the good problem - is that Earth is round. really. the curvature, the convexity of the spheroid is causing us some real problems. could somebody please look into fixing that right quick. where is Donald Trump when we need him?

since mid-morning, when we were in a head-on with a line squall, the wind has backed to a favorable direction, and with perfect gusto for our vessel, to put us on our way to Pape'ete. But the danged planet is in our way. too much curvature between here and there. can somebody please do something about he excess curvature of the world. before Tuesday.

who ever knew this was a problem, besides voyaging sailors. it is not a distance problem, it is a circumference problem. we are good at distance. but when this beast of an old planet gets its back up, and I mean really humps up its gnarly old curved back, all covered in sea water, as it were, as if we couldn't see through that old trick, then the distance from us to point Venus becomes a problem. there aren't enough days for us to get from here to there. oh, and if you think I am a looney to complain about the curvature of Earth, don't get me started on the arc of the sun. nights fly by in a blur of planets and stars, but days drag painful slow. that old beast the sun lingers and gorges itself on our flesh every minute that it lazes there in its sinecure of the sky, and we are its slaves, toiling at the lines and buckets, hiding behind canvas when the angle permits; slaves, I tell you, slaves!

the motto of our noble captain, as he reminds us every day with the sign which he wears around his neck (disguised as a tee shirt), is "and the beatings will continue until morale improves." well let me re-assure you, morale is great, and the beatings are not all that bad. at least we have an edge there. maybe we can insert a wedge under that edge and lever a clever short-cut across this small arc of the globe to reach our destination in the land of tropical deligths.

it's a good problem to have.