Neah Bay to Hilo - over a week

1400 more miles to Hawaii

We vaguely remember passing the Columbia River, Coos Bay, Cape Mendocino, San Francisco, it seems now like one big world of water. We are remembering days more like this oh that was the day you got dowsed by a wave reattaching the jerry jug on the deck or that was the afternoon that was super rolly and oh, I remember the day the water came gushing in through the chain pipe. And today .today is going down as, the day the sleeping bag got put away!! Walking on the deck without full foul weather gear! My god it is 65 degrees in the cabin! Where are we??!! For sure no longer in the Pacific Northwest as the sun is out and gee it is not raining! Yes there is a god.

I think our current location is around the latitude of Santa Barbara just about 800 miles off the coast give or take. We have been gliding the last 12 hours without a lot of unusual motion. That is good. That is really good!

The daily routine goes like something like this: wake up, look for ships, make a few sail changes, check all chafe areas on the sheets and sails, have coffee, tea, a banana, breakfast, take a position report, check the course, email - via the HF radio, read, check into the eve net with position and well being report, eat, read sleep, repeat!

Conversations at sea go something like this " hey how long have you had those socks on??.." ".I feel like I am sitting next to a dirty zoo animal change the monkey's dress!" And "Isn't it YOUR turn to go look for ships?" (We did see a ship yesterday, first one since the Strait of Juan de Fuca). Whoever is 'on watch' scans for ships every 20 minutes or so.

3:30PM PST Susan calculates miles covered in the last 24hrs (I, Elba sit on pins and needles for this). Our best to date was 158 nautical miles. 8:30PM PST we listen to the net (in this case the Pacific Seafarers Net or Pacseanet) and wait for our turn to 'check in'. Feels like hours. This is likely the most boring net in the world. They do good things though and are a safety feature when you are so far away from well, everything. If you go to our website you can see all of these links as well as check our position reports. They are on our Shiptrack, our Blog (as you know if you're reading this!) as well as on Yotreps (under Mist). - At this point it's been a full day and we are exhausted! Yep, you guessed it time for bed!...oh and ship watch ugh. More soon Elba and Susan