It's Sunday here where we are, and we have no wind for the second time in 24 hours. No wind? Crazy. We're motoring as we did when I was awakened at 0230. Standing orders are to awaken me before starting the engine, so I got up and got the sails in, and got us underway before returning to bed.

Oh, yeah....bed.... We paid a lot to have the chain plates caulked to prevent leaks. The chain plates are holes in the deck through which the mast-support cables connect to the hull. They're essential but ours are poorly designed. Nevertheless, they can be made to be leak-free and they weren't. My bed isn't wet, yet, although the way that I've prevented that prevents my sleeping in it, so I'm sleeping on the floor on spare cushions As I told Conni, it's not the softest bed that I've ever used, but I don't roll a a lot!

Things roll along. My day starts at 0400 when I go on watch, relieving Phil. I'm on watch until 0800 when I'm relieved by John and I try to catch a few winks. When I arise, I chat in the cockpit with the gang and do chores. At 1600, I'm on watch again and during my watch we eat dinner, usually cooked by John. I'm off at 2000 and sleep until 0400 when it starts again.

The boat is sailing well and we've had some luck with wind direction, sailing closer to Rarotonga and East then we thought that we could. We're fewer than 300 nm from Raro and will arrive in 3-4 days, we think.

Interestingly, we've seen 5 other sailboats heading West, the beginning of this season's cruising just arriving in the South Pacific. I'm sure that they're as excited as we were and wonder what the hell a boat is doing heading East against the Trades. Well, we wonder too, sometimes.