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It’s my older daughter’s 27th birthday today. Have a great one, Christine!

Position: 25 degrees, 28 minutes south; 175 degrees, 11 minutes east (145 NM day)

It’s just after dinner and the wind has dropped waaayy down. Our boat speed is down to 4.5 knots. We are likely to have to start motor sailing tonight. Bummer – but this trip is about “delivering” Charisma south, not just cruising. This time of year you just want to avoid the storms and if you run out of wind, you motor. In fact, there’s a predicted topical depression south of Fiji this coming Sunday which will bring gales down as far as 30 degrees south, so that gives us some extra incentive to get tied up at the dock in NZ sooner than later.

Tonight’s dinner was courtesy of John and Lisa on Orcinius. They prepared us some wonderful vacuum packed dinners. All we need to do is heat and add rice. Which I did. Tonight we had Lisa’s famous curry chicken in coconut milk. I can’t tell you how delicious it tasted! Tomorrow we’re going to open John’s equally famous spaghetti meat sauce. I’m told it’s a bit spicy, so good we saved it until we have our sea legs. John and Lisa were kind enough to make us four of these meals and I can tell you they are soooo appreciated! Wow!

So onto the news: The aches and pains of a voyage are now setting in. Aches from using muscles we haven’t used for stuff like hanging on for dear life. Pain from the “boat bites” you inevitably get when Charisma is going up and down nine foot waves while being thrown from side to side and you’re trying to do normal stuff like put your clothes on or go to the toilet. Slam, bam, wham! You get bumps and bruises. Oh well.

I had a great sleep last night. I slept my whole watch. No calls for sail changes or anything. Nice five hour sleep. Ann had a great watch in the meantime. Nice smooth sailing breeze, moderate waves, dry, and a bright moon with few clouds. We are presently happy campers although that is likely to soon change as we’re due to sail through a “front” in the next day, which means clouds, rain, etc.

I pulled a revised grib last night and it looks like the weather is changing. We’re going to have to figure out how to thread our way through headwinds that are coming our way over the next half of the trip. Stay tuned for progress on that.

Lime seed spitting update. I’m still working on Ann’s technique. I’ve explained Bernoulli’s theory and the Venturi effect, but I don’t think it’s sinking in. I’m thinking it’s time to move on from pure academic theory to motivational training. Ann: “I just want to spit the damn lime seed as far as you do!” Me: “OK, pretend you are at a Fijian feast and they just fed you a live hermit crab!” Ann: “PPPFFTTBLT” Me: “OK, we’re making some progress here, you just launched one over the lower lifeline. Tomorrow we’ll working on breathing technique”.

So, here we are on one of the great ocean passages of the world and our focus? Spitting lime seeds for distance (or in someone’s case, just getting them over the side). This practice is good though because you know what? It means we get to drink Charismas!