May 27

Sunday, 27 May 2012  Less than 24 hours to go! We will be just short of 3000 nautical miles by the time we reach Hiva Oa and I think maybe 7000 by the time we get to New Zealand.  There is a beautiful hotel on the island with WiFi and gourmet restaurant and AC and showers and baths and soap and clean sheets and a swimming pool and someone to wait on me and it doesn't try to fling you out of the bed and…

Tonight is the last night on this passage.  There are just a few small clouds, the waxing moon is almost at quarter and the sea sparkles in the moonlight.  The brighter stars cover the sky on this most beautiful evening.  The Big Dipper points to a spot on the horizon that is due north and behind us.  On land, I do not pay a lot of attention to the night sky unless something special is supposed to occur.  Out here, I climb out into the cockpit about every 10 minutes to check for lights from any smaller vessel that does not show up on the radar screen.  I often stand there a while cooling off and enjoying the motion of SUNRISE plowing through the water at 7 knots, a rapid clip for sail boats of our size and vintage.  The wind speed goes up a bit and down a bit, but the direction has been so constant the last few days that I rarely touch the self-steering system, and then, just a slight tweak.  We have been reaching for Hiva Oa for days and SUNRISE just wants to stay on the rhumb line.  No steering issues, few sail handling issues, few squalls, no major boat issues.  As Huel Howser likes to say, "It doesn't get any better than this!"

If you believe that the islands are where they are on the charts, at least roughly, and that the incredibly wonderful Global Positioning System and the receivers work as advertised, before dawn the radar screen should show a blip up ahead to our right.  An hour before midnight, I go to the cockpit to checkout the situation, as the wind has veered and we are headed too far west.  Thirty degrees off the starboard bow, there is a bright orange light under a cloud significantly above the horizon.  I watch and realize that there is fire on the mountain of Ua Huka, an island to the north and west of Hiva Oa, and 80 miles away.  This is one tall island.  A minute later, the flare up has died out and nothing is visible in the dark, now moonless sky.