Position: 18 degrees, 34 minutes south; 162 degrees, 36 minutes west

The big blue slide. Up to Palmerston that is. Last night and today have been some of the best sailing on the trip thus far. 10 knots apparent wind with a little over 5 knots of boatspeed. Long period 3 foot swells and blue sky with a few fringing clouds. Charisma is wing and wing and loving it. Gentle sounds of water gurgling past the stern. The only thing we don’t have (yet) is a fish! We’re towing the hand line though and I switched the lure from a hoochie to a rapala in hopes of attracting a tuna instead of mahi (not that I’m complaining about mahi mind you).

We had a spectacular tuna (canned, but good) salad for lunch with half a papaya and this afternoon I used the last of the mahi in the freezer and made a fish chowder to go with some bread we bought at the market day before yesterday that we’ll heat up for dinner.

Ann’s asleep on the foredeck. She went up there to catch the afternoon sun and do some reading, but not long after she went up there, I saw more zzzz’s than abc’s coming from that direction. Life is good out here on the blue Pacific Ocean. It’s even warmed up. The last two days have had SSE wind and the south component brought some chilly weather. We actually broke out socks, shoes and sweaters for night duty. But the wind has shifted and is now out of the east with correspondingly warmer temps. It’s very comfortable and not too hot.

So that’s our news for today. Boring day to read about, but great day to enjoy!