I am in Suwarrow, a small island that is 685 miles from Bora Bora and 487 miles from Pago Pago. It took me 5 days to get here from Bora Bora in the biggest weather that I have seen so far in my nine months at sea. I am helping my friends on Little Wing, who got knocked down, do a jerry rig repair job on their mast so that they can make the passage to Pago Pago where their new mast will be waiting. Fearless did well in the storm and her crew held up fine but it was very taxing and we were happy to limp into this small, remote anchorage.

I have not had the time to explore the island since I have done about nine loads of laundry since we arrived and I have done that all by hand in a bucket on my stern while watching the moon settle in the morning sky. The repairs on Little Wing are extensive and both Brett and I have been helping as much as we can. I have never been so happy to just do laundry and chores.

If you had asked me when I left if I was looking forward to doing my laundry in paradise the answer would have been a resounding no but here life moves at a different pace and I am not weighed down with my job and traffic and doing laundry is a nice way to get a little excersize and get out in the sun, there are worse jobs on a boat and this one is one that I am used to. As a matter of fact, many things have been different than what I would have expected.

I would have thought that this would be a great strain on my relationship with my husband but we have pulled together and we have learned to work as a team in a way that is impossible while we both pursued diverging careers and different goals. While we fight more than we did it is only because we spend so much time together and we need to vent a little steam once in a while and we are the only punching bags that are available to each other.

We have been gone now for over nine months and the day we left Marina del Rey to begin our circumnavigation seems like a lifetime ago. I remember sailing out of the harbor with lots of anticipation about what was ahead of us. I never could have imagined what this journey would throw at me. I never could have imagined the way that I would be forced to grow and challenge myself. The first curve ball that was thrown at us was our crew bailing out at the last moment. We were faced with an option: sail with just the two of us or find a crewmate fast. I did not want to open my boat to another person and at this point I was quite aware of the stress that I was experiencing and felt I was better off with just the two of us. Although we then had to split the watches and it was a more grulling passage with only three hours of consecutive sleep at a time and no sleep at all when we were in a storm or needed to change sail, I had a great sense of accomplishment when we sailed into Fatu Hiva, Marquesas Islands, a place that has no airport and is only reachable by boat. After the crossing was behind us and we had faced the challenges of open ocean sailing I knew that we were a great team that could accomplish anything. This trip has not only challenged us physically it has also challenged our relationship and the boundaries that exist between husband and wife that are also crewmates. This kind of life is the ultimate testing ground for a relationship: you have to rely on each other in a way that land lovers can only dream of (or have nightmares about). A boat is a pressure cooker and all the little things that your partner does that make you happy or that drive you crazy will be there and jump off the pages at you.