Day 16 - Better late than never

Day 16 4/14/06 3:00 am
Coordinates............ 04 52.700S, 133 11.421W
Heading................ 200
Boat speed..............7 knots
24 hr total nm .........170 nautical miles (NM)
miles total since MX....approx. 2317 nm
Wind direct. & speed....NE 15-20 knots
Swell direct. & ht .....E 1-3 ft.
Cloud cover.............95%
Barometer...............994

Those E/SE winds finally arrived today for a solid amount of time allowing everyone to start making the easy point of sail they had been hoping for. Of course as I am writing this to you, little rain clouds have popped up all around us and the wind has decided to go squirrely from NE to E. Can't be choosy though. We have been having an amazing run at it and with less than 500 miles to go we'll take whatever we get.

In anticipation of arriving on land, the boys and I got to work finishing some more flags of the countries we will be visiting. It is proper etiquette to fly the national flag of the country you are visiting on your right spreader, higher than your own out of respect. As a good learning tool, we opted to make our own flags rather than buy them. (Notice Bruce shaking his head in the background like we are crazy). Some of them are a bit intricate shall we say. Hopefully these perspective countries will be honored by our effort not necessarily on our talent.

Of the 25 or so boats that we know that are making the crossing, many are beginning to make landfall and the reports are coming back in on the daily nets. Land sweet land. It sounds wonderful and we can't wait to see it for ourselves. Hiva Oa is the island of choice for most people as the place to enter customs and do more paper work cha cha. It looks as though you can hire an agent to represent you and assist you through the customs process for a fee, which can greatly reduce the amount of time and energy spent to complete this process, perhaps even by a day or so. There are trade off's we hear to doing it each way and have yet to decide for ourselves which will be the best course of action.

The idea of touching land soon is sounding very appealing to everyone. Though the art of living on a moving boat does require much physical effort, all these little legs are so excited at the idea of really running. We are not sure if the anticipation of it at this point makes the wait easier or more difficult.
Always a double edge sword.

Please remember not to hit the reply button when writing back to us. Simply reply to themartins@ohanakai.net, or please cut out the old document so that it cuts down on our download time. We have limited amounts of time that we can get proper connections and download our emails each day. Thank you.

until next time,
love lisa and the boys