The wind cooperated nicely last night and we were able to maintain a steady 7k in winds of 17-20k. The following seas with the swell a bit to the port quarter, however, has made the ride a bit uncomfortable with the boat wallowing from side to side. The moon was visible until about 3am and made it very pleasant. It is now 5:30am and the captain is on watch again. Some clouds are drizzling on us and the wind has dopped a liitle to 14-17k and with it our speed has decreased to 6-7k with the average about 6.5k.

We are still operating on UTC-10 and so sunrise is not expected until 7:10am. Samoa operates on UTC-11 and sometime before we arrive there we will turn our clocks back an hour, probably tomorrow night. We are now 246 miles out of Ofa/Olosega.

At 8am we started the engine to charge batteries and the wind dropped to 12-14k. Sailing at 5.5-6k we calculate we will not be able to reach our destination by tomorrow evening before dark, so we are motorsailing to try to make up some time in the hopes the wind will pick up later in the day. If not we will have to slow down and plan to arrive the following morning instead. The skies are sunny with about 35% cloud cover. We had some rain squalls (with no wind) during the later part of the night but they have all dried up already.

At 1:30pm we caught a small MahiMahi. Jonah, as usual, cheered the captain on as he reeled him in. Once we got him on the deck he flopped like mad, lots of life in him. The hook came out of his mouth while the first mate was below getting the knife and other implements and Jonah was screaming "Don't let it get away Dad! I want fish for lunch."

At 2pm we are still motorsailing, though there is wind. We have about 12-14k from directly astern. If we were sailing we could only make about 5.5-6k and we need to average 6.6k to arrive tomorrow before dark. If we sailed at 5k the rest of the way we would arrive at 2am the following morning which is still no good of course. We don't want to spend another night at sea so we are motorsailing at 7-7.5k and expect to arrive by 4pm tomorrow evening.

At 4pm we are now sailing again. We ran the tank dry and the motor stopped. Now we have to wait a few hours before we can bleed the air out. No idea why I always have to wait to bleed the air, but if I try without waiting I can never get all the air out. Unfortunately, I've had plenty of chances to try since we seem to run a tank dry just about every 6 months! We have 5 diesel tanks and I often forget to switch them in time.