Night Windz

I was in the cockpit dreaming that I was living back in Santa Barbara last night. My uncle Sasha was with me and helping me prepare for my first day as a school teacher. We looked up in the sky and the eye of a storm was passing over head, we looked at each other and thought it strange, I said “but there has been no wind”.

I woke up to 10 knots and by the time I adjusted to being awake it was blowing 15. I was only flying the drifter and bombing along at 6kts. I could see lighting ahead of me in the distance. I asked Quint (the auto pilot) to bring us 20degrees off the wind which he promptly did. I raised the main with 2 reef points and doused the drifter. I’m always worried about tearing the old black sail in windy conditions. I got it down and on the deck without a problem. As I was putting it back in the bag a small piece of sail caught on a sharp piece of pipe and I heard the rip “$#!T”! I look at it more in detail today and figure out how to fix it.

Namaste and I are sailing along at over 4 knots and will make better time now. We have 150 miles to Ahi and I’ll have to start calculating my time of arrival. I have one shot as I have to enter the atoll at slack hi-tide. If my timing is off and I miss it by a big gap, I’ll continue to Tahiti. All I want now is a quiet place to work on the DVD…, Oh, I got my camera working. I baked it in the sun for a few hours and it came back, it was a moisture problem. I will play with it for the next few days and determine if I should send it in anyway. I’d hate for it not to work from Tahiti to wherever.

Cheers.

Alex