June 15, 2007 - Pacific Crossing, Day 13

Mata'irea has a new 24 hour distance record - her latest noon to noon mileage was 187. We have now been at sea longer than on any of our prior passages. We've both reached a state of complete boredom. Each of us has taken to having a long nap in the afternoon to eat up some of the time. The boat is sailing itself. Other than jibing a few days ago when the wind shifted, and jibing back 24 hours later when it shifted back, a maneuver that took 30 minutes each time because we had to reset the whisker pole, we haven't had to touch the sails. Last night we did put in one reef in the main to make our ride a bit more comfortable, but that only took a few minutes (even with the added steps of clipping into a harness to go out on deck to ease and reset both the preventer and the temporary vang). The good news is that the wind is consistently blowing between 15 and 25, and if it stays like this, we'll make landfall in a week. But we expect it to lighten up as we get closer to landfall, so it will probably be a bit longer than a week.