I assume Boxing Day gets its name for being the day you clean up all your Christmas decorations and gifts and put them in boxes. It's a holiday in Australia, and it's also the start of the great Sydney-Hobart yacht race.

It was another pleasant sailing day, though none too fast. We set the drifter after breakfast, then made our time-warped sat phone Christmas calls to our children. We let Otto steer in the gentle seas and plentiful solar power. Then we set to “boxing” Christmas - a major boat cleanup, since Australian entrance inspections are rumored to be even stricter than New Zealand and the Galapagos. Overboard went our Christmas pine, and into boxes went all the ornaments. Then we set about finding every last pine needle on the floor and in the bilges.

We could hear chatter on VHF channel 16 about the start of the Sydney Hobart race two hundred miles away. Australia must have some powerful shore stations, or very high antenna repeaters, since we have been hearing Sydney Maritime Rescue calls for three days now, starting when we were still 400 miles from Sydney. Usually, VHF signals don't make it much farther than 50 miles offshore. The Maritime Rescue stations appear to be volunteer organizations, rather than a branch of the government coast guard. But we also heard Sydney Maritime Traffic announce the closing of Sydney harbor for the start of the Hobart race.

The racing yachts should be passing Eden just before we get there Wednesday morning. It would not do to sail starboard tack across a racing fleet! We still expect to get to Eden early Wednesday morning, before strong northerly gusts to 50 knots may develop offshore and south of Eden. That could make for an interesting race across the Bass Strait! The 1998 Sydney Hobart disaster is always on bluewater sailors minds - when a low pressure system bombed out, dozens of boats were lost, and six sailors died.