French toast with flying fish, Gorgonzola con chorizo, and sandwiches on fresh homemade bread are passage comfort food. Pink slime is not.

Sailing today had three stages. Working to tune the boat to dodge seamounts, lounge sailing and letting Mabel run.

This morning with the navigation station white board noted said “stay clear east of the rhumb line.” Translation; there are underwater volcanoes to the west of a straight line course to avoid them stay East. The wind was shifty, changing direction and speed making it hard to make our course and stay East. I was working the boat and myself so hard I missed one of my observations and my six hour watch flew by. I learned the lesson that to look at the big picture and do not start with little adjustment. The little lines to adjust the helm/wheel are tempting but getting the boat so she wants to go in the right direction works better. A small sail balance can make all the difference. I did not stay east of the rhumb line but missed the seamount. By the next watch I was exhausted and tried another technique our children use. Lie down in the cockpit head on a cushion where you can see the compass and the sails and steer with one hand. Also missed the seamount.

After rough weather halfway way into a trip there is alway some clean up to do and preparation for the upcoming port. The foul weather gear is hanging to dry. We are still uncertain where we can find a berth in New Zealand and wether we will have to haul the boat and paint it. I scrubbed the bottom well in Tonga spending almost 2 hours with a brush, steel wool screw driver and a scrapper. No slime. No goose barnacle. No hard barnacles. She slides through the water smoothly and starts moving with less wind. New Zealand is like the Galapagos, very strict about who accompanies you. Some marinas require you to haul the boat out and paint it if you have not painted in 6 months. It is like springtime in New York and the marinas are hectic. No painters till Christmas and berths have disappeared in the time it takes to responds to an email. The uncertainty has been gnawing at us.

We are also officially a long way from home. Home defined as where our family is. Karl had a dream of trying to sail into a dock where Beryl and Elydah were waving. Justin and Danielle let us know they were eating pancakes in the little cottage on Lake Champlain. Home is a long way...over 10465 miles sailed and today we are in totally different hemispheres, north south east and west. We crossed into the eastern hemisphere unnoticed. No need for another cake as the banana cake is not finished.

Halfway through things start to go bad. The French toast was rescues Tongan bread. . The pink slime emerged from the cooler today. We had a beautiful watermelon. The huge one we were given after the vendor dropped the small one we bought. I had chopped the sweet pink fruit into small piece to make it easier to snack on. The Tupperware it was in has a small hole. Seawater from the squash zone waves into the watermelon. My dream of serving watermelon soda dashed as the slime was delivered to the sea. into the sea.

The ocean is getting colder about 1.2 C a day. Wool is now next to our skin. The ocean map show gradients and swirls. Gradients are rich placed to live. A little shearwater and the flying fish joined us along the gradient.

Bird note: watched a small shearwater like bird follow us for almost 30 minutes. Flaps twice briefly low close to the water then soars up. Checking Merlin and I think it is the Little Shearwater that breeds on the Kermadec islands we are passing.