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Pelagic Pilots

Now I'm under a personal gag order to avoid discussing the "watery wingsuiters." I've been racking my brain for a different topic, but it seems that once you've covered weather, waves, and oceanic aviators, there's not much else to write about.

Yesterday, we put the clocks back another hour, so the sun was just lighting up the sky when I got up for my watch this morning. It's definitely a cheerier experience than waking up to pitch black until 7 AM. If we adjust the clocks again in a few days, Adam can also enjoy a sunrise, and we can arrive in Tahiti without being too out of sync with local time, and our body clocks won't be too disoriented.

We spent yesterday motor sailing with light winds from around 120 degrees. We had the main, headsail, and a Volvo pushing us westwards with 10-14 knots of apparent wind. During the night, the wind died down to 8 knots apparent, so we dropped the main and continued with just the headsail until very early morning when it started collapsing and we put it away.

As we approach Tahiti, we've been preparing for our arrival by completing the necessary paperwork for the authorities. There's a LOT of paperwork involved, and part of the check-in process requires you to enter the same information from your passport and boat registration multiple times into different forms. It seems a bit redundant, and I wonder if we could skip this step by photocopying our documents. But if we did that, who would write "zero" to the question "How many people died of the plague during the passage?" or another zero in answer to "How many stowaways do you have?" These are actual questions that need to be answered depending on where you're clearing in.

We've also been trying to book a marina berth, but our first choice is full, so we've started talking to Un homme à propos d'un chien. Fingers crossed! I've also been looking at flights home, which is both exciting and daunting. I'm not overly enthusiastic about the endless security checks, waiting in line, taxis, struggling with luggage, and the ever-present paranoia that I've lost my passport. All the usual issues with international travel. I'm starting to wonder if it's all part of an international environmental conspiracy designed to gradually make flying so unpleasant that everyone just gives up and stays at home, forcing us to cut carbon emissions. The few remaining flights will become so restrictive that you'll have to arrive at the airport 24 hours in advance, be interrogated while getting electric shocks, and endure airline food that consists entirely of broccoli.



Stinking, nasty, horrible, flapping things. 

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