477nm to go to Marsden Cove. All is well aboard.
Imagine a dinner plate 4 miles across and you sitting in the middle. That’s our world. From the deck of a sail boat the horizon is on 2 miles away and hence your universe is a 4 mile diameter dinner plate full of sea. If another boat shows over the horizon then we see further but that has yet to happen to us.
We asked ourselves how did things look different on day 3 compared to day 2 (remembering I started counting at 0). We came up with few things.
Lissa pointed out the excitement of crossing the line on the chart plotter over to where we had detailed charts. I switched over to the NZ map set a couple of days ago so we’ve been progressing towards this line of detail for some time. Lissa had the fun of crossing the line on her watch. Probably sounds quite trivial but on our dinner plate, these things become quite a thrill.
Helen and Lissa said they’d seen a contrail over us. Could well be a flight from Fiji to NZ. On Likuri Island (Robinson Crusoe) we met a Kiwi couple who said they’d be flying back on Wednesday and they’d look out for us. Perhaps it was them.
We had the fishing line out for the first time. Count for the day was zero. Now we’re truly back to normal passage making.
I’m sure we came up with a few more things but right now I forget.
For most of the day we had a clear blue sky which kept our spirits high. Coincident with a glorious sunset we crossed the half way mark. The night was just as clear. Without a moon in the sky the heavens were out in their full glory. Lissa got an extra lie in on her 2am shift as I stayed out star gazing a little too long.
Although we’ve seen no other traffic visually or on radar we did here one side of a couple of boats chatting on the VHF. They had their conversation on the emergency channel, presumably thinking no one else was around to hear. We didn’t recognize the voice or boat names so we didn’t break in.
I have been checking in to the Rag of the Air radio net (run out of Fiji) each morning to log our position and get their take on the weather. Because the net controller uses the same source of weather as I do I don’t really get anything new. We do get to hear the position of Nymph who left a day before we did from Fiji. We’re gradually catching them up so that creates a little excitement each morning.
If you’re interested in our path, we do post our position a couple of times each day. The positions can be found at http://www.winlink.org/dotnet/maps/PositionReportsDetail.aspx?callsign=KC2RIY
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