Speeding to Samoa

Well team, we’re still out here, rockin’ and rollin’ through the watery expanses of the western South Pacific.

We’ve had some excellent conditions for high speed sailing the last few days. Long afternoons and nights with steady winds over twenty knots, keeping our sails full and our hull charging above six and half knots through the waves. And yes, we consider six and half or seven knots (aka miles per hour) to be high speed sailing, indeed.

We’ve had a few squalls that briefly double the wind speed and propel us up to eight knots; we've had patches of flukey breezes that keep us constantly monitoring the sail trim, babysitting the autopilot (which has this totally illogical and awful alarm-clock-style screech that sounds every time the winds shift while it’s in wind-vane mode…terrible choice, Raymarine!), and ultimately firing up the engine.

The forecasts for heavy weather early next week continue to hold true, and they have every boat we know west of Bora Bora running for cover. If the gods are with us, we should make it to Samoa over the weekend and have excellent protection from any weather that makes it that far north.

As this goes to press, we have 340 miles to go, and Dom and I are hanging out more than we’ve ever hung out before—admiring the tropic birds circling overhead in the morning, dreaming about the foods we wish we had onboard, marveling at the unbelievable velocities at which we used to travel by car. As much as I love the Dave Attenborough worthy ornithology, I wouldn’t mind snacking on some Cheese-Its as we open the sunroof of our WRX and floor it to Samoa at 75 miles per hour, arriving, no problemo, this very afternoon.

Drive safely, everyone!

Photo caption: Underwater hangouts make all this time underway worth it.