The seas are flat and the weather is hot. Sophie is currently running the genset, clothes washer, dish washer, water maker, 3 air conditioners, and the port diesel engine. It all works, baby! We have 3 loads of laundry drying on the lifelines, and there are no squalls in sight. Laundry dries quickly near the equator when there is no rain.

The children are relatively well behaved. They are cranking out schoolwork, and Leo is doing shifts and vacuuming the boat. They watched “Transformers” last night.

Our current position is 02.27.176 South, 146.17.542 East. We covered 150 miles in the last 24 hours, all of it under power. We have a 1 knot current pushing us, along with a slight easterly wind. It’s not unpleasant. Kavieng is 280 miles behind us, and we have only 92 miles to go before we drop an anchor for a quick break in the Hermit Islands. Our friends on Per Ardua arrived there this morning, and we will join them tomorrow once we have enough daylight to navigate through the coral reef and into the harbor. We’ll stay there for a day and a half, then continue on for 260 miles to Jayapura, our entry point into Indonesia. We’ll leave the Hermits on Tuesday afternoon local time and plan to arrive in Jayapura Thursday morning so we can have a full day to clear customs and immigration.

Not much else to report. We are running a radio net with Per Ardua on SSB, and they said we’ll be crossing a shipping lane to get to the Hermits. They encountered 15 ships last night, all heading either 330 or 150 degrees, which is the direction between Hong Kong/the Philippines and Eastern Australia/New Zealand. We’ll keep our eyes open tonight.

I made 2 big mistakes last night. I grilled these lovely chicken breasts stuffed with pancetta and parmesan cheese using our panini press, but I coated the chicken with a pickling rub that Lauren had made. The food was WAY too salty, one of the saltiest meals I’ve ever cooked. Then later on during my shift I watched the movie “The House Bunny.” It was TERRIBLE, one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.

So that is the state of our passage right now. All systems are go, and our only issues involve oversalted food and offensively bad movies at night. Tomorrow I hope to write a blog update from a very remote coral atoll, where we plan to swim, nap, and drink cocktails with friends. We’ll be 93 miles south of the equator.

Westward!