Land Ho

April 8, 2008--The good news is that we are in sight of land--Ua Huka. The bad news is that Nuku Hiva, which is where we need to go, is still a bit more west. Yesterday we thought that if the wind held, we might make it in by this evening. Well, last night the winds died, which meant that we would get in at dusk, so now we have had to actually slow down in order to try to time our arrival for tomorrow morning. If we can't, we will have to heave to and wait outside the entrance to the bay. We were hoping to avoid another night of watches, but it just isn't meant to be.

The day before yesterday we had a spectacular 24-hour run of 162 miles. We had almost a knot of current pushing us to the west, and that really helped us to make those miles. Yesterday, we had another good day with a run of 147 miles. Both days were picture perfect days with blue skies, white puffy clouds, and a beautiful blue ocean.

Unfortunately for Steve the fishing has not been too good. He has not caught anything in quite awhile. The boat needs to be going at the higher speeds in order for the fish to hit the lures. We spent so much time barely moving along that the fish didn't bother. We have had a fair share of flying fish come on board during the night. Night before last, I was sitting on watch when suddenly I heard a loud sort of crash. I immediately thought that the Monitor line had broken again, but it turns out that a large flying fish had come sailing into the cockpit and hit the steering pedestal.

We will keep our fingers crossed for our making landfall some time tomorrow morning.

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