It always takes us three or four days to settle into a seagoing routine. The hard part is teaching our bodies to sleep in three-hour chunks, a couple of times a day. The norm the past 20 years, with fast boats, is to have most passages over before we get into a rhythm. On this first leg home towards Fanning, we’ve got five days to get into the routine, and then we stop. It would be much more efficient body-wise to just make a straight shot back.

Meanwhile, the breeze is still out of the east at about 14 to 16 knots, on the starboard bow. True wind angle is 50 degrees – about 7 to 10 degrees tighter than our usual open ocean sailing angle. If we were aboard Beowulf or Sundeer, we’d sag off a little to leeward, and then head back up on course tomorrow when we get into a more southeasterly flow. But as this Unsailboat has a excellent VMG, and we are very comfortable at this angle, Wind Horse is heading straight for the anchorage.

We’ve backed off on speed to a hair over 9 knots over the ground (just under 10 on the speedo). Running at 1750 RPM there is just enough engine noise to make you aware the mills are turning. But the typing on the computer keyboard is louder.

We decided to slow down so as to arrive in midmorning, with lots of good sunlight to use exploring the pass and lagoon. If we ran at 11 knots we’d be at anchor towards the end of the preceding day. But then there would be little time to check out the anchorage possibilities. Since we are virtually as comfortable at sea as at anchor, except for sleeping at night, what’s the rush? This will also give us a chance to test fuel economy at this slower speed.

Even though there are no sails to trim, there is still a lot with which we can occupy ourselves. Weather is still a major interest. We are now looking for comfort angles, as opposed to angles that are fast for sailing – and in a few days we’ll start to pick our way past the hurricane belt. We are watching the weather faxes, downloading .GRB files with the GFS model going out a week, and reading the latest bulletins from Hawaii and the Tropical Prediction Center. All of the above to get a feel for the rhythm of the weather north of the equator.

In the tropics, very small changes in pressure make for big shifts in the surface winds. The reality is that isobar charts – lines of equal pressure that are so helpful in higher latitudes – don’t tell you much in the tropics. A better tool are isotachs or tropical streamline charts as shown above. These show the surface wind patterns. If you look closely you will see Pago Pago in the lower left, Christmas (which is just south of Fanning) mid-left, and Hawaii just west of center about one quarter of the way down from the top. There is a chance that as the two Eastern Pacific hurricanes shown die out, there will be a period of east-to-southeast winds between Fanning and Hilo. If we are ready to leave Fanning, this could make for a very easy trip.

Satellite images of clouds are one of the best tools for assessing what is happening with tropical development. Jova and Max are clearly shown here. You can also see Christmas bottom left and the Hawaiian Islands above at the left edge. We had been offered satellite direct receivers to test from a couple of manufacturers, but decided against yet another piece of electronics. We are now rethinking that decision.

With a lovely air conditioned interior in which to reside, we sometimes forget just how nice it is on deck. This morning we spent a couple of hours on the flying bridge, enjoying the tropical ambiance, watching the clouds and waves. Linda was reading aloud from a biography of Martha Gellhorn – gutsy W.W.II correspondent. During this sojourn we opened a couple of the deck hatches as well as the basement floorboards to air things out.

With the basement exposed, we took a few minutes to go shopping for supplies, and gave the systems a quick look (the engine room gets checked every hour).

We’ve gotten into the habit of watching a movie together after dinner and this routine goes on at sea. Last night, for the first time, we each had a movie going for part of our watch, using headphones for sound.

Even though the forward cabin is very comfortable, the aft cabins are more so. Motion is slightly less, and engine noise, while higher than forward, is still low enough to not be a factor. So, we’ve been sleeping in the aft port (double) bunk stateroom. This shows how wimpy we’ve become. On most yachts crossing an ocean, you would think that the forward cabin on Wind Horse was heaven. But now our definition of "comfort heaven" has changed.

We’ve now burned off a bit of fuel and have room to start playing with fore and aft trim. With a full load of fuel on board, trim is dead level. We are actually a little more efficient with bow-down trim, so we are now on one half of the port engine room day tank, drawing from the aft center basement tank. We want to stay full displacement for comfort, so we are making fresh water to offset the fuel we burn. This fresh water goes into the forward water tank. The result is a slight bow-down trim and about a 3 percent improvement in efficiency. Not a lot, but it all counts, and besides, this is the closest we can come to trimming sails.