Saturday, May 12 - Day 19

21.12 N
149.19 W

Distance travelled: 133 NM - 500 NM left

Aaaaaaah! Now this is nice! We are coasting along at 5.5 knots in 15 knots of wind. It would be absolutely perfect if the seas were flatter, but that close cross swell persists. Even though Ka'sala continues to rock, the movement is a bit gentler. The sun is shining. The sky is blue. It is warm - 28 degrees, and the sea a crystal blue. Gorgeous! We have had to work the sails, moving from wing on wing to a deep beam reach to keep Ka'sala as stable as possible.

We ran the engine today to top up the batteries, which also provided us with hot water to take a "bath". Lovely! It was calm enough that I was able to make a chickpea curry this morning and a little later I will make another batch of naan bread. Although we are down to apples, onions and potatoes, I have been able to plan out the rest of our meals until our arrival and we will be fine.

We aren't quite at the time zone, but decided to move to it this morning as we ended the night watches. We will stay in this zone until we are halfway to Sitka in late June.

We are in the "zone" for Hawaii weather reports and the outlook is looking excellent for the remainder of our passage - 10 - 15 knot winds and no southern swell. Of course the wind and waves will accelerate through the channels between the islands, but it should be manageable. We will monitor the weather closely and keep our fingers crossed that the predictions turn out to be correct. We are still expecting to arrive in Honolulu sometime on Wednesday.

We haven't seen any plastic or garbage in the sea until today. We were in the cockpit enjoying our lunch when we started noticing a fair amount of flotsam gliding by. Most of it was hand-sized bits of plastic, hard to discern what they began life as. There was quite a bit of it over an hour of time, then it stopped. Where had it come from? Prevailing winds and current are behind us, so maybe we just caught up with it. Horrible to see in the pristine blue waters.

Our moods are buoyant aboard the pea-green boat! Har! Har!

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