It was a wonderful morning today. Time to sail. We had a wonderful time on Guam and met many fantastic folks. We discovered more on the war path of WWII than we expected once again. It was a great stay on a lovely island. I must say my preconception of Guam was greatly exceeded.

In the morning we dinghied about to say goodbyes. We gave Fuji San a copy of our Kapingamarangi Cruising Guide since he indicated he might go that way. We said goodbye to Tamio San who is a single handed icon in our books. We also stopped by to say goodbye to Arni, Cam, Molly and Nancy on Jade. As always we were sad to leave all of our new friends on the boats and at the yacht club.

We are also greatly saddened to leave Roq in his final resting place. He was the most loyal and loving family member on four legs you could ever have. It was hard to motor out of the harbor without his cheerful face looking up at me from his little corner of the cockpit.

I had to dive on the safety line we tied to the mooring chain to loose it and then put the dinghy away. We also spent some time briefing Miki on the safety procedures onboard. Miki has sailed with us on a charter cat in the British Virgin Islands so she is not totally new, though this will be her first ocean passage. He sister Emi has a good 1,000 mile on her so Miki is eager to catch up.

After prepping the boat and checking the rig and all of the hardware we dropped the mooring bridle. We called the harbor master on 16 and got permission to depart. It was the last American voice we would hear in an official capacity for perhaps some time.

We waited until we were out of the harbor to raise sail. This gave the batteries a chance to come up and the seas were mellow behind the island anyway. We set out on starboard tack in a deep reach for Ulithi atoll. Unfortunately we were 10 - 20 degrees high. As we cleared Guam the wind veered and we jibbed into a nice deep port tack.

It was a lovely, slightly cloudy, but lovely day of sailing. The seas are following and the wind is light in the sails but keeping us at 6-7 knots. As sunset we put in the night reef and slowed to closer to 6 knots. We are looking at an ETA of late night two days from now on March 20th (51 hours from now). We hope to shore that up with a bit more speed tomorrow for a late afternoon landfall on the 20th. If not we'll bypass Ulithy and head for Yap, arriving on the 21st.

Hideko Says: "I can't believe we finally left Guam, we loved it. Rest in peace Roq, we love you." Miki Says: "Roq is still with us, we feel his happy spirit."

313 nm to Ulithy