Sailing to Tonga

I was about to write the day, but I realize I've lost track and that pretty soon it won't matter. In a day or so we'll reach the international dateline. If you think 'spring ahead' is tricky try sailing into tomorrow land. In in a couple of days tomorrow will be today, or today will be yesterday, or something like that. And we'll need to change time zones for the hour too, so it'll be tomorrow minus (or perhaps plus?) and hour...

We're still sailing along in big bouncy seas. The wind is fairly light and is completely unrelated to the sea-state. It's not very pleasant. I'm really hoping it will settle out for a baking day though. It's time for bread and other goodies--food keeps the passages from getting too monotonous, but when it's too boisterous no one wants to eat.

It feels like we've been doing a lot of sailing recently, and we still have a bunch to go to reach Fiji by the 23rd (22nd on this side of the dateline) when our friends arrive. We tried to pick a date that made sense, one that gave lots of room for us to be slow. But we're always slower than we expect... Which we should have expected. Pretty much every visitor we've had we've either been a bit late for (oops) or arrived just in time. No matter how good our intentions are.

I wouldn't give up having folks visit though--this is too special a journey not to share. And usually people bring boat parts and treats--very important stuff:)

18 21 S
164 19 W
550 miles to go
average speed 6.2 knots

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