Stretched out with my arms splayed away from me I feel just like a marine iguana holding onto a black basaltic lava flow when the wave washed in. I was in our berth and the boat was doing one of those crazy rolls. A hangover for all the fun we had yesterday. Ocean swells are the problem. The swells are waves made far away moving through past us now. They can be big and today are 4 to 6 feet. When you sail with the wind at your back, called downwind, the ocean swell catches up to you from behind. If Mabel Is moving quickly she can power over them with gentle roll but if the wind is light and Mabel does not have enough energy she skids and jerks. These twisting skids are like a hangover. New things wiggle bang and rattle in the boat and this morning it was just hard to crawl out of the berth even as I pretended to be a black marine iguana.

Our hangover was not helped by all the skipped naps yesterday that made us a little sleep deprived and sloppy. At the change of watch I am frustrated as I have been sailing very slowing much of the morning, there is a part of a sail to fix, jib to douse and main to hoist. We did not do a good job and ended up breaking the mount for the spinnaker pole. The only good thing is it did not hit Karl's head. In our sloppiness we had forgotten the wear helmet on deck when messing with large metal objects on a twisting rolling boat rule. We debriefed over pancakes. Karl has a temporary fix and we are schemings to get a new one shipped to the Marquesas.

This is a long passage and we have to be careful to pace ourselves. The idea of having other boats is a comfort but our competitive tendencies creep in when they should not. Today the distance to go is like starting a Transatlantic to the Azores. This ocean is big.

By the end of the day they sky has cleared a pleasant change from the on and off squalls of the past few days. The repair is holding and we are moving nicely. Dinner was our comfort food chorizos con garbanzos with Karl's fresh bread with glorious stars over us. To our left the Big Dipper is planted firmly down with 2 stars hidden under the horizon. To our right the Southern Cross is now familiar. Not a bad hangover cure.