Fiji to NZ Day 6

06 Nov 0400 UTC (1700 local)
lat 29.54 S
long 173.20 E
course 194 T
speed 6.2 kts sailing now triple reef main, stay and partial jib. Motor sailed most of the day
wind 17 W has come around from SW to NW now W
swell 2 M west
bar 1006 cloudy occ squalls - the last one got me not Josh, but he got last night's after dinner squall.

4 on board - no one has had to walk the plank yet.

Random thought for the day:

Did you know that your sense of taste gets all out of wack in zero gravity? Crystal (a most excellent over achiever if there ever was one) of s/v Heart Strings told us that. At the time she was working with a NASA team to figure out a menu of food that astronauts would find palatable. There you are miles above the earth, the shuttle comes with a dominos pizza and it tastes like manure! bummer! While many kudos to Crystal and her teammates, I digress from my point. A survey of two (Dennis and myself) has brought to light that the same type of phenomena occurs during crossings. For whatever reason, all the go to comfort things taste nasty (e.g., beer, chocolate, caffeine, red wine) and the appetite just isn't the same either, nothing really sounds or tastes good (at least to me). For me it is also accompanied by a horrible taste in my mouth that even compulsive teeth brushing can't make go away. Now, not eating surely won't hurt anyone on this crew, especially since with few exceptions, all we do is move from one stationary place to another, but it just doesn't seem right somehow. Oh well, doesn't seem to stop me from cooking or the guys from eating.

Otherwise - not too bad of a day today. Sunny to start, winds were light and flukey overnight so the engine was on until late this afternoon. Oh the conundrum of going fast vs. running the engine. As Brad would say, "welcome to the southern ocean". We haven't had to run the generator but once so far. I shudder to think of the cost of refilling the tanks, but hey what do you do?

Had a squall at the end of my watch today. The starboard jib sheet managed to escape and wound itself into macrame around the port sheet. No big deal really, Dennis turned us up wind so I could go untangle everything. Yee Haw, pretty bouncy up there. Fortunately when it came time to put the third reef back in the main, Josh (the resident expert at this now) was available to do the honors. We are now on a starboard tack, first time in a while. Not my favorite tack in this boat. Paul is loving it though as this tack keeps him in bed. Not so much for Josh - Oh well, only 3 more days or so.

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