AU to PNG, Days 2 and 3: easy living

It took nearly three days for the wind to fill in, but it's finally here. Totem is now moving along at a good clip, averaging 7.5 knots on a beam reach in 15 knots of easterly breeze. We spend much of our days reading, as books and e-readers littered around give evidence. The ocean sparkles with the indescribably vibrant sapphire color we only seem to find at sea.



Our second day out, we clocked what I think may be our slowest 24 hour passage runs ever- barely 90 miles, and that just because we motoring! We're checking in on the Pacific Seafarers Net, a ham net comes on in the early afternoon (in our time zone, anyway). Land and boat based radio stations in Hawaii, Australia, NZ and other locations around the Pacific track the progress of boats under way that check in on the daily roll call. One by one, each boat provides a position, boat course and speed, sea state and weather conditions. The other two reporting boats yesterday had even less wind than we did in their various corners of the Pacific- it was a theme. One of the net controls joked "no course, no speed, no wind...no hope!"



I don't know about no hope, but it's good that we hit a comfortable stride early since our travel time is stretching out. We're also going to get more wind and bigger seas in a few days. I'm trying not to dread it. The wind we can handle; it's the sea state that will affect comfort level. We'll probably get into PNG on Wednesday, unless the conditions cause us to change from our currently planned route into a south pass inside the reef to Tagula/Sudest.