Pacific crossing, day 6

5 22.864 S, 103 40.145 W
875 NM from the Galapagos

Hello, friends! Papillon greets you from the wilds of the Pacific ocean. We are on day 6 of our passage, with 14-18 days to go.

It has been an exciting time, filled with sail rearrangement, broken sewing machines, bored and cranky children, and, of course, seasickness. Thankfully, that last faded around day 4, so I can now rejoin the functioning complement of the crew. To wit, I am cooking again, which everyone appreciates. Hooray for me, because I calculated correctly beforehand. Before leaving San Cristobal, I cooked a big pot of chili, a roast chicken and two pizzas. Those things ran out just as I was feeling better, so no one was subjected to endless peanut butter sandwiches this time, a la the Chesapeake.

Stylish lost a tooth this morning, so we had a Lost Tooth Party at lunch, complete with fresh hummus, vine leaves and other tasty treats. She is preparing a note for the Tooth Fairy, so she can find us at sea tonight. This fiesta doubled as a Spinnaker Party. The winds have slowly been dying and moving astern of us, so we sadly packed away the main and jib, said goodbye to our 7-8 knots of speed, and pulled out the light wind sails.

For those of you not familiar with a spinnaker, these sails are very big and very light. It is rather like flying a house-sized K-Way jacket in front of the boat. For all that, they pull like heck. At the moment, we are flying two - a main spinnaker and a mizzen spinnaker. Erik hastens to mention that we tried to fly the mizzen staysail (which the girls named the candycorn sail for its orange and yellow stripes), but it tore after two hours. He then broke the sewing machine trying to repair it. I think he only did that so he would have something to fix this afternoon - we all make our own fun on passage - but that may be untrue. Then again, yesterday he spent the day running new cable for our SSB. Some days, I shake my head at the gulf between us. Anyway, the current sail configuration is giving us 6.5 knots, which is not bad in 9 knots of apparent wind. May the K-Ways hold out.

As for the ladies, it isn´t all bickering and kicking. They are busy doing crafts and playing Barbies and Duplo. They stroll the decks, clearing the scuppers of flying fish and small squids, and throwing them back into the water. We´ll start school in a little while, which is fun and eats up the hours. We are all working on our constellations when the sky is clear (I highly recommend H.A. Rey´s The Stars - A New Way To See Them). And the days roll on.

We are running the SPOT tracker once or twice a day (to conserve batteries), but it should give you an idea of where we are. Cheer us on!

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