Toau to Hilo: Day 16

Somewhere midnight last night, we lost our wind. Not only did we lose it, what there was of it decided to come from directly behind us. Holding a line to Hilo was impossible-what we could aim at was San Francisco!

We slopped around in the swell, not going anywhere, listening to our sails slat and bang and after about six, murderous hours of that...we kicked on the engine again. We had humped aboard extra Jerry cans of fuel before we left Tahiti and were able to top them off with 15 gallons in Anse Amyot by trading with Gaston (we paid him in new rubber slings for his spear gun and a set of Bocce balls), so we were cool to give in to our frustrations for a little while. By afternoon, the wind had come back and returned to something resembling the expected trades, so we hauled up the sails and were off again.

I lost a giant fish today. I'm not sure what it was but it was certainly in the marlin family. I saw it jump before it hit our line, yelled "Kai!" as it took the lure and ran all the way out with it, snapping our 250 pound test, before I could even jam our teak plug stopper in the reel. Jon stumbled up on deck from his off watch, to find a stunned Kai and I staring at our empty reel.

I feel bad that somewhere out there is a honker of a fish with our line and a hook in its mouth but whatever it was it was so big that without a gaff (or even with the little one we had) I don't think we could have gotten it aboard. It also spared me spending the next three days in a boiling hot galley, canning fish!

If the gribs are correct (which they seem to be half of the time), we should have very strong winds for our final leg of the trip.
As I write this, I already have a reef in the mainsail and the head sail furled in a bit and we are are heeled hard over and making about 6.2 knots have about 17 knots of wind, with the bigger stuff expected in the next day or so.

If this keeps up, a Sunday morning arrival might just happen after all!

LAT: 13*03.23N
LONG:146*57.67W

COG: 315