Whether the albatross brought the wind as in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner or the complex thermal and momentum physics tied up the the weather models we are sailing along nicely. Progress can be seen. New Zealand is no longer the only land showing on the charts. Progress also can be seen in the food. The last New Zealand grapefruits was eaten yesterday. The heels from the last store bought bread were marmalade toast with breakfast.

Determining where the halfway point will be crossed is a puzzle. Neither the start point or the end point is simple. We may be headed towards Sydney or Eden. Sydney has the advantage of many marinas and a famous new year fireworks. Eden is 200 miles, two days closer to Hobart. Not being a huge fireworks fan and the idea of reducing the stress of the very last hop to Hobart we are tending towards Eden. Even if we were certain where we are going to make landfall how to we account for the 3 days, 150 miles to round Cape Rengia. The oven is on today for baking bread and pizza so we are declaring tomorrow halfway to somewhere in a straight line from somewhere else with a plan of celebration brownies. We are low on chocolate cookies to fuel Karl through his night watch. Halfway to somewhere Browning’s will solve that problem.

The first albatross circled this morning at the end of my morning watch promptly followed by 5 fast moving dark colored smallish whales. They quickly crossed the bow. I thought they were pilot whales but they lacked a distinctive arcuate dorsal fin. Our global whale book does not have the great identification key. I am bewildered by how many whales there are here in the southern pacific including Pygmy whales with squished in faces. These might have been blackfish whales.

The real whale treat was after breakfast. I was leaning back against Karl and we were talking about taking the Mabel Rose to Lake Champlain when Karl yelped and pointed. There was a sperm whale right next to the boat right at the edge of the boat, 10 feet from us. It surfaces twice before disappearing. A prized souvenir from my Nantucket summers was a black cast iron sperm whale paperweight. The whaling museum sold them in black and white, a nod to Moby Dick. The iron sperm whale sat on my shelf through my entire childhood today I finally could almost touch a 16m long leviathan. We were sailing over a 1000m deep ridge. Easy diving for the whale who swims 3km down to hunt for squid, it may be a site of upwelling cold nutrient rich waters to the surface.

The second albatross circled in the late afternoon indicating more good luck. Culinary collisions in our telephone booth sized kitchen suggest maybe two albatross are not luckier than one. Elbows prints in freshly risen bread dough, brownie batter over the fridge compressor and an inverted pizza all indicate two might not be better. Still wind is blowing us to the west nicely.