Lat: 4 00.295′ S
Lon: 103 24.213′ W

2151 miles to go…

Well, hard as it may be to comprehend, there’s not a lot to report from the middle of the ocean. After the Halyard Incident, things have been a bit hum-drum. We changed course to the SW for a day or so to try to find stronger winds and that worked out well, so we’re back on course and averaging close to 6 kts.

Tomorrow is a local holiday — 1000 Miles Down / 1/3 Of The Way To The Marquesas Day. There will be a special meal, possibly a brief speech (toast) by each of the four dignitaries (imbibers) present, and then we’ll be back to the slave-like task of being disturbed from our reading or conversation every 15 minutes to look around.

We’re definitely in a friendly current, which is a welcome change, and are slowly increasing our average speed for the trip on just the main and jib.

We’ve learned a bit about cooking with salt water to conserve fresh water in the last couple days. As Lauren mentioned, the first thing we attempted with good success was steaming potatoes with salt water in a pressure cooker. Next, we looked up the salinity of salt water (an average of 35 ppt) and calculated the conversion into cooking units — 1.6 teaspoons of salt per cup of salt water. We guessed that a 4:1 mixture of fresh to salt water for cooking would taste just fine and Lauren used it to good effect with the rice for a great Cuban lunch (black bean soup over rice and plantains in rum caramel). For dinner we had some tasty quesadillas using homemade tortillas and Tiffany added her first loaf of homemade bread, which was excellent; I finished it off for breakfast this morning.

It takes about 3 days to get “into the groove” of a passage and by now we’re all well adjusted; it seems to get easier as we go along. There are still a few small birds around occasionally of the same type that we saw in the Galapagos, there are always flying fish, and we’re still getting a few squid on deck every night, but other than that there’s not a lot besides sky and ocean. We haven’t seen any sign of human existence since we were out of sight of the Galapagos.