Position: 40 degrees, 22 minutes north; 155 degrees, 57 minutes west 130 nm day

Nothing’s changed. We’re still double reefed main with the stays’l, doing 5.5 to 6 knots going almost due north. Squalls come and go. Sometimes it’s nice, blue sky or at night, stars and sometimes it’s raining, but Charisma is in Day 10 of heading the same direction, on the same tack, heeling over at the same 35-45 degrees and bounding over 4-6 foot waves. Any movement about the boat is treacherous. It you don’t time your move just right you get slammed against ribs, butt, etc. I have not touched the sails or the wind vane for at least three days. Looking forward to some change which looks like we might see in another day or so. As we approach the high, the wind will go behind us somewhat, which will also be our signal to start angling NE to climb over the top of the high – at which point we can start heading due east for Victoria.

It's a great day when Ann makes her wonderful stove top pizza.

It’s been too rough for fishing today, so we didn’t, but Orcinius, who are 295 nm ahead said they caught a couple skipjack tuna. We don’t much like cooked skipjack, but they make incredibly good sashimi, so that’s some incentive to get the line back out.

We’ve started our list of “Broken Boat Stuff”. Hope it doesn’t get too long. Going on one tack with no changes for so long takes its toll in chafe and assymetric wear. For now, we’ve got; Wind vane paddle spring broke. Paddle won’t stay down so I had to jury-rig something until I can take it off, Shortwave radio mic cable has a break. Taped it carefully, hope it lasts the rest of the trip. Stays’l hank “line” (don’t know what to call it) frayed and broke. It’s been jury-rigged, but we’ll need a new one when we’re done. Hopefully it will hold until then. My fix on the hydro-generator when we were in Honolulu is working, so unlike the trip up from Tahiti where we had to run the engine every day to help the solar panels (too many clouds in the trade winds), we haven’t had the engine on except for three hours a week ago to outrun a squall. Nice and peaceful.

And how are WE you might ask. Actually a bit bored. It gets monotonous going the same direction for these 10 days, essentially pounding our way upwind to get above the high. We’re reading a lot of books to beat the boredom. Can’t wait to get up to where we turn the corner.