Days 19-20

Day 19 - Wednesday 6/25/08

Overcast with a few small squalls. 

Breakfast: Fried rice. Lunch: Apple, pickles. Dinner: Skillet fried potatoes, onions, turkey spam. Wind at happy hour.

We are still rolling around. Cannot wait til the day I can walk through the cabin without holding onto something, so I do not ricochet off the bulkheads!

Sad note. Horatio, bless his valiant little soul, fell apart tonight. A fracture in one of his metal parts (that Ken had patched with a hose clamp on Day 4) finally gave up the ghost when the hose clamp broke. Happily, nothing fell in the drink. We will try to find a tig welder in Hilo to patch him up.

It is too roll-y for Bob (wheel pilot) to drive (he gets confused in lumpy seas), so we will be hand steering all night.

Day 20 - Thursday 6/26/08

Drizzle though the night. Bright sunny day.

Last night pretty much sucked. Took turns standing one-hour watches to hand steer, sleeping on the off-watch hours. Saw a big ship in the dark heading our way from the NW, probably bound for Hilo. Ken called him on the radio, and he had seen us too and changed course to ovoid running over out little 32-foot Sand Dollar.

On one of my morning (daylight) watches I was blessed with an escort of about eight dolphins, who looked for all the world as though they were racing our boat. They would zoom up one side, cross in front of our bows, then re-group and zoom up the other side. One even took a huge leap that brought him four feet out of the water! They only stayed about five or ten minutes, but they were magnificent.

By noon, seas were blessedly calm enough for Bob to drive. There tiny (pinky finger sized) flying fish all over the deck.