Unbelievable.

Some of you may have had the pleasure of seeing Sophie participate in Seattle’s Downtown Sailing Series sailboat race on a warm summer Thursday night with a northerly breeze blowing. The racer class would start at 7:00 PM and head a couple of miles downwind towards a turning mark right in front of Seattle’s downtown skyline. Sophie would start with the cruising class at 7:05, and despite having 40 happy souls on board, with the spinnaker up on a downwind sail Sophie would catch up to the racing class by the time we hit the downtown turning mark.

Well, that’s pretty much exactly what we are doing right now, but instead of carrying 40 happy souls we have 2 tons of diesel and water, 12 weeks of food, 20 shelf-feet of books and school supplies, and 300 bottles of wine and booze. (Well, maybe that last part is the same.)

And instead of turning at the downtown mark after 2 miles, we have been heading straight downwind at the same course and speed under just the spinnaker for the last 30 hours. It’s as if we started the Thursday night race on the first leg, never stopped, and made it past Portland by the next day.

Our noontime position is 10.28 n 124.42 w, and we are sailing at 6-7 knts on a course of 204 magnetic in 2 foot seas. We have covered 170 miles in the last 24 hours. During this 30 hour run we’ve adjusted the sheets once and our course once. Otherwise, we are simply hanging out in the 90 degree sunshine.

From an overall progress perspective, we are 1487 miles from Hiva Oa and expect to hit the 1420 mile halfway point tonight. Jenna and the kids baked an apple pie to celebrate. We also expect that our second half of the trip will be faster than the first half because we haven’t used our engines yet. We are 1397 miles from San Diego and 355 miles from our weather router’s waypoint of 05 n 127 w.

Like I said, this is unbelievable!

For dinner last night Rich and Dan prepared an “Ahi trio” — seared Ahi in a red pepper sauce, seared Ahi terryaki, and lime Ahi ceviche — accompanied by the last of our fresh kale salad mix and brown basmati rice. Tonight will be pizza night, and we’ve all spent the day watching the pizza dough Jenna made during her midnight watch rise in our warm cabin.

Not much else going on. I went up the 3 times yesterday to fix a set screw that came loose from the mainsail track (again!). When we get to the Marquesas I plan to reset all of the mast track set screws with Loctite.

Everyone is sleeping well. Jenna and hazel are napping right now, Leo is in his room reading, and the boys are up top hanging out.

Finally, I’ve been reading “Moby Dick” this week, and came across the following passage:

“Round the World! There is much in that sound to inspire proud feelings; but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only through numberless perils to the very point where we started, where those that we left behind secure, were all the time before us.”

I don’t know, it seems quite nice out here right now.