Awaiting the Rain

Aloha 6th graders!

We had a couple of unusual sights yesterday: a seal and a baby shark.  We were cruising along in the afternoon, and I was sitting on the bow, enjoying the sunshine, when I saw what looked like driftwood in the water. As we approached, I realized it was a small seal about 4 feet long hanging out on the surface of the water.  When it was on our port (left) beam (side), it dove down and swam off.  We are a few hundred miles from land, so the poor thing is a bit far from home.  Not a half an hour later, Brenda spotted a baby shark off the starboard (right) side of the canoe.  It appeared to be about the same length as the seal.  We're hoping that they don't meet up any time soon. 

Yesterday afternoon we were sufficiently behind Hikianalia that they decided to close all but one sail and wait for us.  We put up our gennaker and made our way towards them.  We finally caught them at sunset, after some misdirection on their part, and are now back on our course heading of 75 degrees.  As evening wore on, our clear night started to cloud up, awaiting the arrival of the next low pressure system.  These are the weather systems that bring wind and rain. The calm, warm weather we had yesterday was the product of high pressure: nice weather.

We haven't been doing much fishing, mostly because we have so much meat on board that we need to eat it before it goes bad.  It's tough on the crew members who are avid fishermen, as we see many birds out fishing, and we know we could be catching something good!  We haven't even touched the meat in our freezer, which is full to capacity.

Although we are still using our GPS to monitor our course line, we have been using the Southern Cross and Alpha and Beta Centauri to guide the steersmen.

Our watch got a bit of a surprise last night: because we crossed the date line, we lost a day and an hour.   We were all settled in our bunks and cozy, thinking we had another hour to sleep, but because of the time change, we were on in ten minutes!  Usually Fati wears her panda hat, I wear my tiger hat, and Herve wears his camouflage beanie with two clothes pins for ears as the wolf. Last night we decided to switch...and tried to switch personalities too.  Herve did a good job as the tiger, and Fati was pretty fierce as the wolf.  I tried to be a cute panda, but I don't think I accomplished it as well as Fati.  Tonight we'll make another switch...I'm feeling like being a wolf for a while.  I'm really enjoying this watch; we always end with a group hug, and last night ended with all three of us on the steering hoe.

Ms. Fuller