Day 24 - The beat goes on

Another sunny day on the brilliant blueberry sea. We've had some really relaxed sailing weather. About 10 knots out of the East. Right now it is down a little to about 7 or 8 knots and we're only doing about 3.6 knots. And we aren't headed in the ideal direction, but we're heading WSW and then we'll turn back WNW later. I think we managed about 111 miles towards Hilo in the past 24 hours but we also dropped about 30 miles south. A bit more wind would be nice, but we'll take some mellow weather too.

Right now we are 420 miles from Hilo, which is about 4 more days away. We are almost out of tomatoes (yes they lasted 24+ days without refrigeration). And we still have bread, tortillas, Mexican cheese (for Michael), potatoes, onions, cabbage, carrots all doing ok without refrigeration. The colder weather really helped keep our produce from rotting. We've eaten all the apples. I bought less than planned because Michael didn't really think he'd eat many, but then once he tasted how good they were we mowed through them.

We are doing great on fresh water. Day 24 and we are still on the main tank of 38 gallons. I expected this to run out around 4-5 days ago. We've been very careful with it. We cook some dishes with a little salt water and we wash everything with salt water too.

Yesterday we had some popcorn as a treat, but we were foiled. The package must have sat on the shelf forever because it didn't pop well and was chewy. It was like having tiny little bits of cardboard with some salt and brewer's yeast.

Due to our distance from any email stations and the noise levels, getting our email messages out has become extremely difficult. It's been taking me hours of trying/retrying to send messages. I have decided to not spend so much time fighting it. I'll try once in the morning and once in the evening no more than 30 minutes each. Our HF radio needs some fine tuning so I can use it on other bands. This is the first time we've used our new antenna setup so I've been finding some issues while on this passage and it's only just now started to limit our email connectivity. I'll have to work on it in Hawaii.

{GMST}18|53.3|N|147|46.5|W|Day 24|Wind E 10{GEND}

Right now we are probably about 420 miles from Hilo, which is about 4 more days away. We are almost out of tomatoes (yes they lasted 24+ days without refrigeration). And we still have bread, tortillas, Mexican cheese (for Michael), potatoes, onions, cabbage, carrots all doing ok without refrigeration. The colder weather really helped keep our produce from rotting. We've eaten all the apples. I bought less than planned because Michael didn't really think he'd eat many, but then once he tasted how good they were we mowed through them.

We are doing great on fresh water. Day 24 and we are still on the main tank of 38 gallons. I expected this to run out around 4-5 days ago. We've been very careful with it. We cook some dishes with a little salt water and we wash everything with salt water too.

Yesterday we had some popcorn as a treat, but we were foiled. The package must have sat on the shelf forever because it didn't pop well and was chewy.

Due to our distance from any email stations and the noise levels, getting our email messages out has become extremely difficult. It's been taking me hours of trying/retrying to send messages. I have decided to not spend so much time fighting it. I'll try once in the morning and once in the evening no more than 30 minutes each. Our HF radio needs some fine tuning so I can use it on other bands. This is the first time we've used our new antenna setup so I've been finding some issues while on this passage and it's only just now started to limit our email connectivity. I'll have to work on it in Hawaii.

{GMST}18|53.3|N|147|46.5|W|Day 24|Wind E 10{GEND}