Anila Day 9 Update: Another Record

Summary: We had another fast day! Sea conditions were a litter better with more consistent waves yesterday and last night. Today the seas have built a bit and are more confused with not much change in the wind. We hope the forecast is right and this settles down a bit tomorrow.
Position: 08 52.16 S 111 50.95 W at 12:00 UTC-7
COG: 252 degrees m
Distance : 192 nm (24 hr), 1,519 nm total
Average Speed = 8.0 kts (24 hr)
Distance to go to Hiva Oa: 1,590 nm
We don’t have much new to report today. We had the fishing line out most of the day yesterday but didn’t catch anything. The bigger sea conditions are making it hard to move around and everything, especially preparing meals, takes twice as long as we take care not to get hurt, damage, or drop anything. We are looking forward to passing the halfway point within the next day and will celebrate with some of our favorite foods tomorrow. We are happy to have just beat our previous 24 hour speed record! We made Bananas Foster for dessert for something a little different and they were delicious. (Fun fact: This dessert was invented at Brennan’s Restaurant in New Orleans.)
We were finally able to reach Panache, a catamaran that left the Galapagos just before us, and a passing freighter on VHF yesterday after seeing both come up on AIS. AIS stands for Automatic Identification System, and is a digital VHF broadcast from ships that is shown on our chart plotter. It’s like digital radar, but also shows ship speed, heading, name, length, width, and other data. We also broadcast on AIS so other ships can see us too. So it’s nice to know the VHF is still working and hear some other voices besides our own. Although we tried with the stabilized binoculars, it was too grey and rolly to see either one off on the horizon. Weather reports show the waves and winds backing off in the coming days and we’re hoping they are accurate. It’s nice to be moving fast, but we could also use a break from wave motion.
Wildlife Sightings: A few flying fish.