S 14 deg 10', E 153 deg 9' -- Race 7, Day 3

Day 3, I finally get a post up. Looks like I'm maintaining consistency in
that regard. I should have an official "Crew Diary" posting as well. I'm
told that whatever reason the last one didn't work has been sorted out and
that this one will definitely go. Alex, who is in charge of media for the
boat, even promises to make me famous. I guess I'll know in a month.

The opening theme of that other post is how hot, sweaty, and generally
disgusting things are here. Now, I was on mother duty as I wrote that,
which meant spending most of the day below decks, where the situation is
much worst that up on deck. Today, I had the 6-noon watch up on deck, and
it was beautiful. Very mild sea state, steady wind, ticking away the
distance at about 10 knots, really couldn't ask for more. Now I've been
below for twenty minutes waiting for access to the PC to write this, and
I'm back to sweaty and disgusting. More of the romance of sail!

It's actually our fourth day at sea. We motored the first twenty-four hours
to get outside the Barrier Reef via Hydrograhper's Passage, a big channel
through. I thought it would have been cool to sail through, but it makes
no practical difference. You could barely tell there was a reef as we went
through, with only one small sandy island poking up and a few navigation
lights visible. It was fairly narrow in spots, so probably best to be
motoring.

The course of the race is also less cool than I was hoping. I assumed we'd
be sailing a fairly direct course to Da Nang, through Indonesia's islands.
Instead, we're going through the Solomons, around New Guinea, then around
Luzon in the Philippines, before rounding down to Da Nang. It should be
less pirate-infested. I suspect it also allows Clipper to talk up the
length of the race, which is a big part of their PR.

We have a lot of new crew on board. One guy has joined from another boat to
help our numbers, and he seems really good. Of the six people just
starting... we'll see. Some are very good, but I thing we might have a few
"passengers". For example, one was helming, and when she got tired, she
just let go of the wheel and sat down! Another time, I was on deck during
my off-watch (avoiding the heat down below), and I got asked to join the
three people on the grinders. Being a good team player, I did, at which
point two of the people who were on-watch sat down! I told them they could
keep grinding, and one laughed like it was a joke. I gave it about an hour,
then I insisted they come back in, as I had some other duty to deal with. I
know these first few days can be tough, getting used to life on the boat,
broken sleep for watches, etc, so I'm trying not to judge too quickly. But
hey, I judge. It's my nature. (This may come as a surprise, because I
usually judge silently, but I guess my secret is out.)

*******************************************************

As an aside, my friend Bryan (hey Bryan!) said that with a little
reformatting, you can plug the lat/long in my headers straight into Google
and see exactly where I am writing from. Unfortunately, I can't remember
what formatting is needed, though I know it requires the little circle for
"degrees", and I can't figure out how to do that on this computer. Maybe
when I get to Vietnam.