Day 7- July 6

THE AUTO PILOT IS WORKING! Rick was able to get it working finally last night at midnight, and we had it up and running the remainder of the night. It worked perfectly and kept us on course. Rick can jimmy-rig and fix anything! It is noisy, especially on the port side of the boat where Garrett and Steve sleep. Steve wore his noise cancelling headphones all night to block out the noise.

Rick also has the Genset working beautifully and is keeping the batteries charged up. 

This map isn't the best, but using the coordinates, this is about where we are right now. The blue is showing all the way up to Alaska and down into California, maybe a little Mexico. The green is where we are going, Hawaii. This isn't their exact course but pretty close to where we are going. The boat is about 1800 Nautical Miles away from Hawaii. 

We have gotten far enough out to Sea that we no longer see any birds around, which tells us how far off from land we are. 

Last night, while Tim was at the Helm, he was able to spot a Russian Container ship and he was able to communicate with them through the radio. Apparently, they(the ship) had their eye on our boat for a while, and knew that we were under sail. 

We haven't had to change our sails all day. We are moving at a steady pace, in a steady direction. We are heading in a West/ southwest direction. At one point, we turned into the wind and it was almost a gale wind speed of about 24 knots.  We had to reef the main sail, but the Mizzen sail and the 2 foresails are up now. We are travelling at an average speed of about 7.2 nautical miles. The swells around us are between 4-10 foot swells approximately. It is about 70-75 degrees out but it is very breezy so it feels cooler. 

Steve and Brian are still seasick, but they are on the mend. As soon as we feel sick, we have found that taking a little break and laying down tends to restrict it from getting worse. Steve ate only an orange and a bottle of water 2 days ago, and suffered the consequences of being dehydrated yesterday. Aside from Brian and Steve not eating, the others have all eaten well though. Brian and Garrett made some delicious coleslaw today, with some sticky rice and brown sugar as a nice treat.