Position: 23 degrees, 11 minutes south; 174 degrees, 54 minutes east We’ve gone 140 miles the last 24 hours which is pretty good. Can’t complain about averaging 6 knots for the whole period.

We’re finally south of the really bumpy weather/seas. We’re now seeing more like 5 foot seas and 20 knots of wind, but importantly for our ride, they are now on the beam. The wind has backed to the east, so we can go due south with the wind out of the east-and now tending a little north of east.

It’s a little humbling to look at the chart and see the depth of water we’re sailing over. 16,000 feet deep!

This afternoon, all the clouds blew through and we had one of those incredible blue sky days with white cap peaked waves over deep blue water all the way to the horizon.

Wilson is sailing admirably. I don’t think we’ve make more than one or two adjustments since we left. BUT, last night was a bit of a worry. It got a little blustery about the change in watch, around 0300 and while I was putting on my gear and Ann was getting out of hers, we both noticed Charisma started wandering a bit. A look up to the helm and Ann noticed that the self-steering lines had come off the steering wheel. They have done this before and I thought I could just rewind them and we’d be back in business, but once I got a good look, I realized something, somewhere in the system was broken. The lines were completely slack. Oh, Oh!

I looked over the stern at Wilson’s steering rudder and saw that the line had broken at the knot on the very end that holds the paddle. Worse yet, it had pulled through the 1 ½ inch tube that goes up a couple feet up to deck level where there’s a second turning block that directs it forward. This is not an easy fix back at the dock! You have to feed the line into the tube and through two sheaves-in this case while rocking and rolling in what was then still 6-8 foot seas and 25 knots wind. I actually wasn’t sure I would be able to do it until morning at best, but decided to give it a shot.

Properly harnessed into the boat, I started by seeing if I could get the line to go back through the tube and assorted turning blocks. After a couple tries I was amazing to see it come out the bottom. OK, step one, check. Now I had to slide most of my body down over the stern to be able to reach the paddle (which was moving back and forth with the motion of the waves doing its best to chop my fingers off). It’s a little unnerving sliding head first over the stern, in the dark, in the waves and down the back of the boat. I’m not sure what my feet were jammed against, but they were holding on tight while the rest of me was over the side and preoccupied with getting the steering line back through the paddle. Once there, it was simple. Tie a figure eight knot and get back up on the boat. Whew!

Once back on board, I made some adjustments to the now shortened wind vane steering line and we were back in gear. Wilson is now steering as well as ever. When we get some lighter winds and calmer seas, I’m going back over the side to check on the other side for similar wear. This is, by the way, a line that we replaced in New Zealand. I was not expecting it to wear so fast since the last one went four years before showing signs of chafe. It’s different line though as we couldn’t get the exact same as comes with the Monitor. Oh well.

Life at sea. On a boat. Stuff breaks you fix it.

P.S. to JHam. Your Mana is working. Right after we read your note about sending us lighter winds, we downloaded a GRIB forecast that showed…lighter winds in our future. Good job! P.P.S. We were talking with Bright Angel Bob on the Bula radio net this morning and in reading yesterdays’ blog post, he correctly noted that we had to be on “port tack” not “starboard tack” as typed in the blog. He’s right! Ann was seated in the cockpit and facing aft when she wrote it and got a bit turned around. As editor, I also completely missed it. Thank you Bob for the catch. We are in fact headed to New Zealand not Japan.