Miles traveled day 2: 123
Miles traveled total: 142
Miles to Majuro: 1,657
When we left Niue and headed to Tonga we were in a time zone 11 hours behind GMT. When we arrived in Tonga we didn’t cross the international date line, but we did move our calendars up a day. Not having changed our clocks, but changing our calendar put us in time zone GMT +13. Tonga wants to be on the same calendar day as their neighbors to the south, particularly New Zealand and Australia. But they cheat and move the date line a little bit for their convenience. So when we left Tonga yesterday, we’re still east of the date line, and I think we’re back in GMT -11, which is yesterday. If we stopped in Samoa on our way north we would have to set our calendars back a day again. But given that we don’t plan to stop, I think we’ll just leave today as it is and when we do cross the date line (six or so days from now) we’ll be on the right day.
The passage so far is rolly but uneventful. The seas are pretty lumpy, but we’re making pretty good time north. The low north of the Solomons has broken back up into two and doesn’t look threatening. One is moving due south and the other very slowly southest. The SPCZ (south pacific convergence zone) is moving south, and we hopefully will pass through it as we go north and it goes south. It’ll bring rain and nasty squalls, but our hope is that we’ll only get a day or two of them, and it’ll stay south long enough for us not to get stuck in it. The worst thing would be for it to start moving north again with us, but our fingers are definitely crossed against that event.
Nothing else to report. When I finish this email we’re going to set up the spinnaker pole and move the jib across and sail wing on wing, with the wind dead behind us. We traveled much further north than we needed to yesterday, but didn’t mind making some ground north. The winds are about 17 knots, so that’s enough to move us along from directly behind and hopefully we’ll ride with the swell better and things will quiet down a bit.
Teresa
