Day 14
5pm, 23:00UTC
pos 09deg19S, 119deg36W
Distance to Fatu Hiva is 1129
Two weeks at sea. What were we thinking? I looked on a big chart and we are now basically sailing across exactly half of the Pacific Ocean. The Marquesas lie just east of the middle of the Pacific. The good news is that we now have the rest of the year to do the other half! All is well with all. We are fully settled with flying only the spinnaker and running almost dead down wind, the true wind occasionally goes up to 22-25 knots, but usually around 14-18 knots, the spinnaker seems to cope fine so far. We would have preferred to be doing a series of gybes and sail more on a reach (which would increase our velocity made good and ground covered considerably), but the sea is too rough to do that. We are on a family cruise not a race and we cant afford for things to break. Seeing as we are only under spinnaker with no back stay, i rigged the main halyard as a running backstay to the port stern cleat, the 'opposite corner' to the spinnaker's direction of pull. The topping lift and main sheet is also tight. But this in turn creates stress where the shrouds and forestay are connected lower down so i am not too sure about what to do.
Still no rain, this morning the tank was well below half, a scary wake up call, we have to seriously conserve water or we will run out. We are running the watermaker more now but its producing a very tiny stream of water, barely dribbling, if it was any weaker it would be just dripping. Lots of dark rain clouds around but they don't actually cause rain?!?
Chantal's lunch was a yummy tuna/rice/beans tortilla feast. Andy is preparing a Chilli con Carne with cous cous dinner. Josh and Indie are doing well, Josh no longer has diarrhea so that's a relief. I tried two ballyhoo style flying fish this morning but they dont last long in the rough sea and chop.
The sea is ROUGH ROUGH ROUGH. My estimation is that we will arrive at the Bay of Virgins early on the morning of 12 March, a full 7 days from today. We can no longer imagine what it would be like not to rock and roll around.
Bonjour
G
