We are sailing again, and have been for about eighteen hours, and the wind is creeping upward the way I used to sneak into the kitchen for chocolate chip cookies, quiet and patient, hoping it would not disappear before I got there. That last stretch of motoring was a long one, around five days, easily the longest I have ever run the engine in one go. I kept my spirits up the way you do, by ignoring the calendar and being polite to the weather, and now that the engine is off you should see the smile on my face. I spent most of last night on deck just taking it in, the sound of the wake as the boat slips through the water, that steady motion that reminds you why you are out here in the first place.

All that motoring did one good thing, which was put miles behind us. The leg is at about two thousand seven hundred and twenty-five now, with roughly five hundred and change left to Gambier. The fuel worry that has been quietly riding shotgun for a while has finally eased. I have got enough to cross the line, which is its own kind of weather change. The arithmetic stops being a thing you do every time you check the gauge, and starts being a thing you do once a day to confirm you were right yesterday.

The mission from here is simple, and short enough to fit in a sentence. Enjoy these last few days of open ocean. Do not break anything. Get a little creative with whatever is left in the galley, which is its own discipline at this point.

And on a slightly less serious note, the picture you see here is me doing a happy dance in my head. I will keep it there, since the deck is wet and the foredeck is no place to test choreography. But it is in there, and it is a good one.