May 1st. - Another Week At Sea....

This week has been, well, pretty much the same as the last three weeks. Imagine, if you can, seeing NOTHING but BLUE.... The magnificent deep blue of the ocean juxtaposed to the azure blue sky... Well, that's what we see in every direction every day.

Today we are at 08S 115W, which puts us 1400 nautical miles from Hiva Oa. Since leaving Panama City we have traveled 2500 nautical miles in 19 days. That averages 131 miles per day at an average speed of 5.5 knots or 10 kph. Still no faster than the speed we recorded last week.

We have not run our engine in gear for more than 8 days. We did make water a few times which requires the engine, but a little over a week ago we discovered a broken motor mount so we will save the engine and hopefully only use it to enter and exit ports. We are not sure how long the other three mounts will last. It is not likely we can get the mount fixed before we get to Tahiti, some time late in June or July.

This week we finally caught a fish! A beautiful small Blue Fin Tuna which we enjoyed for supper the day we caught it. We also caught a small Mahi Mahi, but let it go...

We have seen exactly two ships since crossing the Equator. The first was a 500 foot cargo freighter on its way to Auckland New Zealand. After contacting the ship via VHS they checked their AIS and sure enough, saw us... My sense is that these folks rarely look out their windows when romping across the ocean. The "Spring Breeze" passed us within a mile and came really close to our friends on Swift Sure a few hours later in the night. Apparently, he to had to contact them to get them to pass at a safe distance.

Shelley saw our second ship two nights ago, just after midnight. It was a huge Japanese fishing ship, who apparently was dragging a net 5 miles behind it. It also had a helicopter on board. Unfortunately fish don't stand a chance with boats like this out here...

The other day we looked over the side of Blowin' Bubbles to see that she has picked up some hitchhikers.. We were healed over for so long that areas of the hull not protected by bottom paint were in the water long enough for pesky barnacles to grow without abandon.

We have laid a line down the side of the boat and let it rub against the boat as we move through the water. Over time this should remove many of these barnacles.

All of us have gone through many emotions as we travel this watery highway. Each of us have had bought's of sleep depravation when we have had rough weather. The good news is that we have had smooth sailing for the last few days and we feel like we are getting our bodies and souls back to normal.

All going well we should make landfall sometime in the next 12 days or so. The wind today is much less that 10 knots so we are ghosting along at 4 knots with the Spinnaker flying. At 4 knots we can still make our 100 mile a day, self imposed, minimum...

More soon...

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