July 8

July 8, 1915 hrs. Position N 34.55 / W 157.57 120 miles for the last 24 as of 1000 am
Last evenings calm held steady all night. We had a beautifully calm night, the ocean was like glass and the stars were out in full. We even had a little bioluminous over night. The break off of the bow had a nice green and sparkly glow, made for pretty night on watch. We motored all night, a total of about 16 hrs straight. It was the first night that we took our full watches in the cockpit. All of the other nights it has just been too wet with all of the spray coming into the cockpit.
I'm beginning to see a disturbing pattern in our routine. I stand watch from midnight until 4 am. Bob gets up and takes over and I hit the sack. For some reason the last two mornings at 5:50 am Bob has decided that it is time to do something with the sails. This morning he determined there was enough wind and went to roll out the jib. No big deal normally. This morning, however, the jib sheet decided it didn't want to stay attached to the jib so when he pulled it just fell loose. This of course meant it was time to wake Paul and drop the jib part way so we could reattach the sheet. I told him afterwards that tomorrow morning at 5:50, if he has an urge to make a sail change or adjustment, to pour himself another cup of coffee and think about it for another couple of hours.
The big news for today is that we are no longer on a starboard tack! We are still pointed pretty much north, with just a little easterly heading, but we are now on a port tack. This is a big deal because that means we have hit westerly winds, the one which will push us home.
We had a nice 12 - 14 knot wind today and smooth seas for much of the day so we were making very good time, about 7+ knots for most of it. The wind and seas started picking up this afternoon and I called Bob up from below to reduce sail a bit. Just was we were working on that the windvane decided to snap a line. Oh joy, everything at once. We got it all straightened out, the line repaired and continued on. We are settling in for the night. We still haven't seen anything significant as far as tsunami debris but lots of little stuff floating by. I did see a sandal float past the boat, it made me stop and think for a moment. We have shortened sail and slowed the boat up for the night just to be prudent. (That's for you Mom and Becky, want you to know that we are thinking about safety)
That's about it for tonight. The boat is rocking and rolling on the new tack and we are finding all of the loose items that seemed fine when we were leaned the other way. I wouldn't mind another smooth night to spend in the cockpit, not looking real likely at this time though.