We decided to do one long passage instead of 2 short to allow us to embrace the offshore rhythms. Short passages you never get past the sleep deficient that comes a at the start. Getting up for my morning watch I could see through the porthole the sky full of stars. A star filled watch at last. My early morning watch is a benchmark for our changing position and the shifting time. Orion is high overhead and the arc of the Milky Way extends from north to south. The fuzz of the magelenic cloud glows. When I get my camera out to take picture I realize I am not alone, a bird is perched on the solar panels. Karl had said there was a bird on his watch. The boat motion occasionally has sharp rolls, making the olive oil bottles in the cup board clonk . I grab a handhold to keep steady on these rolls. The solar panel is flat and slippery. During the sharp rolls the bird skitters off edge, taking flight with a sideways launch. It returns giving me a chance to photograph it in flight . It is brown, long slightly curved beak and webbed feet. I think it is a petrel but all the apps on my phone are on strike. The possible petrel stays through predawn when the American flag flapping in its face does not respond to its persistent pecking and it departs. Mostly we are seeing boobies brown and beautiful white masked. I think petrel came to celebrate Danielles birthday. It is nice to hear Danielle and Justin in the birthday phone call but the connection is bad and we do not talk long.

The other surprise this morning was the persistent drizzle of bananas. To many to eat. Banana pancakes for breakfast. I wonder can you get poisoned from to many bananas?

Met Bob from New Zealand, our new weather router did not predict the banana rain. He is so different from the “routing “ we used in our first transatlantic. 20:years ago the service was provided by a retired sailor in Toronto named Herb Helenberg, featured in a New Yorker article. You let Herb know before you sailed, sent him a donation and communicated by shortwave radio. He insisted you to sign on at the beginning and wait for your turn as he worked his way through each of the boats he was tracking. If he could not hear you someone else would relay your information to him. Each day he would give you a waypoint to sail to. The next day if you had not gone there he wold chew you out. Karl had to sit by the radio for at least an hour each day The herb advice was at the same time the NOAA weather faxes were available so it was Herbs guidance or weather map. We were relieved when we sailed out of the range where we could use herb and hesitated to use him again.

So different are our weather options now. The iPad on the nav station can download any of several global weather models, will do automated routing and lots of other functions. It does not have is local knowledge which is why we hired met bob. There are many professional routing services because in our global just in time economy getting a cargo ship to the port at the right time has huge financial consequences. Met bob specializes in this part of the ocean where we do not have the experience of how the weather works. He sends a brief email with waypoints. He did not yell at us hen we ignored his first one yesterday but proceeded to the second. While he did not predict the thump thump of falling banana he did give fine Mabel Rose a way point to just south of Rose island, a tiny atoll south of American Samoa. A sense of humor in a weather router.