Miles to go: 492 (approx 5 more days)
Wind E at 5 kt Seas Calm
Motorsailing SSE at 5.5kt - 1 reef in the main, staysail
At approximately 8:30pm last night, we gave up trying to sail and turned the engine on. We've been motorsailing ever since. Most of the night, we had some wind, and so left all the sails up. This morning, the wind went to nothing and we reeled in the genoa. By late this afternoon, the sea was glassy.
We motored through some nasty looking cloud banks--but got neither wind nor rain out of them. We even changed course once to try to motor through a shower, but by the time we got there, it was gone. We are really salty, and could use a good rain water rinse.
Though we hate the noise and the expense of running the engine, it is so much more civilized traveling this way... rather than sailing 'on our ear' and bouncing through the waves, splashing salt water everywhere. And we are going faster than we have been going, bashing to windward--mainly because the big seas really kill our speed.
This afternoon, Dave un-pickled the watermaker, which has been laid up since we got to Hawaii. In a little over 2 hours of motoring, we made 90 gallons of beautiful fresh RO water. That is about 12 days of water for us. We carry a total of 170 gallons of water, and always maintain about 40 gallons in reserve. We normally use about 7 gallons a day, and our watermaker makes 40 gallons an hour, so running it an hour once a week keeps us in plenty of fresh water.
The last boat out here with us, Reflections, is arriving at Manihi tomorrow morning. We will still be a couple of more days--probably arriving Friday morning.
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Sherry & Dave
Headed South for French Polynesia
http://svsoggypaws.blogspot.com
At 5/16/2011 5:32 AM (utc) our position was 06°24.07'S 146°41.94'W
http://svsoggypaws.com/currentposition.htm
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