Rrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm - 8 October

Family and Friends:

Well, we have been mmmmmoooooooooootttttttorrrrrrrrinnnngg for a day and a half now in light winds and gently rolling seas. Not much to do but check the gauges every now and then and fine tune the course with the autopilot. Having some good earplugs, good crew on the opposing watches and a relatively smooth ride, I managed a huge sleep last night. I think that five-and-a-half hours straight is a record for me underway.

We crossed the International Dateline last evening around midnight. It was a non-event as we had, in theory, crossed it already when we arrived in Tonga, and set our clocks accordingly. You see, down in this part of the planet, Fiji, New Zealand and Tonga are all vying for the soon to be disposed of discretionary income of those trendy individuals who want to be the very first to see the millennium sunrise. Only thing is, Tonga is on the EAST side of the dateline. Technically, that would make them the last to see the millennium sunrise. But Tongan culture being what it is, they bent the rules and bent the dateline to include the country in the eastern hemisphere. They even started daylight savings time (needless in the tropics) so that it would be midnight in Tonga one hour before it is midnight in Fiji and New Zealand. Get a life!

When I was on watch this morning at O-Dark-Hundred, the bioluminescence was particularly active. For those of you who have not been at sea at night, it is a plankton that emits a glow similar to the phosphorescent dots on a wristwatch, when the water is disturbed. "Moonshadow's" bow wake was like a fountain of little stars and the prop wash coming from the stern was aglow. You can even see it when you flush the toilets, which use salt water. More than you needed to know, eh?

Our noon position was 27 deg. 13 min. south, 179 deg. 13 min. east, about 620 miles north/northeast of Auckland, and 205 miles closer than our noon position yesterday.

Cheers, George and crew