Enroute to Easter Island - Day 7

Last night we had a terrible night. Just about sunset, the wind came up really strong--eventually reaching 20-25 knots. And with the wind came the seas--we had big steep seas on our beam again, and were rolling like crazy, as well as banging into a pretty good wave train coming off our port bow. We tried everything to make it more comfortable--heading changes and sail reduction. We finally gave up and rolled the genoa all the way in and basically rolled and banged all night. Neither one of us got much sleep.


But this morning, the wind was down and we got a nice light rain to help wash the salt off the boat. For the first 2-3 hours, the seas were really confused... the washing machine again. But with the overcast, we needed to charge the batteries anyway, so we motored for a couple of hours. By late morning, the sun was out, the wind was steady, the seas were fine, and we were having a great sail. This continued all day, and was capped off by a beautiful sunset.

Now, about 8pm, the wind is still steady and the seas not bad. Hope this continues all night!!

We have 'only' 1006 nautical miles to go! Tomorrow morning we should reach our halfway point of 945 miles. Current ETA Easter Island is March 16. The forecast looks pretty good for the next week all the way into Easter Island.
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At 3/9/2010 1:49 AM (utc) our position was 12°39.91'S 100°13.60'W