Distance sailed in last 25 hours: 207 nm
Distance to Honokohau, Hawaii: 1161 nm
Latitude: 15 54.214 N
Longitude: 137 03.897 W
COG: 276M
SOG: 8.7 kts under sail
Wind: 10 kts NE
Seas: 3 ft wind waves
Weather: 0% Cloud Cover (with occasional puffy trade wind clouds)
Barometric Pressure: 1013.4, rising
Sea Temperature: 76 F
Yesterday was another fine, sunny day aboard Samadhi. The ocean has such an amazing personality. On days like this, we could spend hours watching it undulate and foam. On overcast, gloomy days like the two before, its raw malevolence makes us want to look away and think of more pleasant things. No matter what, when above decks, the antics of ubiquitous flying fish of all sizes catch our attention. The other day, we were sure we saw one with the name tag "Jonathan Livingston".
Yesterday morning after breakfast, Phillip and Kelly attached the wayward soft vang to the mast, this time with the help of a spliced spectra strop. Spectra is a high tech fiber that is stronger than steel, truly magical stuff. It seems to be holding up well under the not insignificant load. We're optimistic that it'll hang on until journey's end.
Just as we were finishing up lunch in the cockpit, we spotted a barely-loaded container ship on the horizon off our starboard forequarter. Phillip went down below to find its information from the AIS stream that should have been displayed on the chartplotter--only it wasn't. Eventually, it did come through, and we resolved to check into the issue once they were gone. We called them up to say hello and watched as they passed about a mile in front of us on their way to Papeete in the South Pacific. Later, we went around testing each connection and found the culprit, a faulty connector at the cable to the antenna. He cut it off and replaced it. The meter says that everything is well now. We'll just have to wait for another ship to come by to be able to test it in action!
We had a more significant problem yesterday, the failure of our autopilot! Kelly was on deck attempting to adjust course while the autopilot wasn't responding. The boat continued to turn more and more upwind as Phillip had terrifying visions of hand steering for the next 160 hours. Luckily, it turns out Phillip had accidentally knocked the breaker for the hydraulic pump to "off" while working in the engine room. This left the autopilot computer on without any ability to control the boat! Phillip apologized for the misadventure and vowed to install a guard on the hydraulic pump breaker to prevent this from happening again. We were all happy that there wasn't a real issue. In these quartering seas, it's a fair bit of work to steer Samadhi!
In the mid-afternoon, we took advantage of the outstanding weather to all go up on deck and set off the remaining giant firecrackers from El Salvador. They're about as plain as they come, but they do make a very satisfying *boom* when they go off. If you'd like to get an idea, you can see us blow up last year's Jack-o-lanterns with them on our YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/floatything. Crossing oceans amongst the sound and smell of explosives caused Phillip to suddenly desire to paint Samadhi 'haze gray'.
When checking our email, we received confirmation from Honokohau that there is currently space available for us. We'll make a last check as we get close enough to call on our US cell phone, but for now the plan is to clear in at Honokohau. Assuming we can keep these speeds up, our anticipated arrival is May 29th. Of course, if the weather changes, your guess is as good as ours.
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