Sunday was spent reorganizing our boat for 'at sea' conditions, and putting away the toys (kayaks and bicycles) we got out for Fred & Suki's visit. Early Monday morning, we left our nice mooring (and good wifi) at Bloody Mary's and headed for town, where we fill up with fuel, got groceries, and checked out of French Polynesia for good.
Once we got our town chores done, we moved to the pretty anchorage west of the north end of Motu Toopua. This is a really nice spot--pretty, somewhat remote from town, and with OK wifi. Wish we could have stayed there longer. But it was time to move on.
We sailed out the pass at Bora Bora at 0845 this morning, and saw a couple of whales!! What a nice start for a passage.
We have been mostly running Dead Down Wind (DDW) all day. We are using the 'Tom Service' configuration--genoa on a pole to windward, main vanged out to leeward, and the staysail in the middle. This is surprisingly stable, even in pretty big seas. Our autopilot will hold a course with this configuration pretty well, and it's the maximum sail area we can spread.
In the late afternoon, we tried going over on a starboard tack for awhile. It worked for a bit, but then the wind came around, and we went back to our DDW configuration.
The wind is only about 12 knots, and the seas are calming down. But we would like to make the pass at Mopelia by about noon, so we are hoping for a couple of more knots of wind. For awhile we were only making 3.8 knots, and that wouldn't cut it, but we are up to about 4.5-5kts, which will do fine.
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Sherry & Dave
In French Polynesia til August, then west toward Tonga
http://svsoggypaws.blogspot.com
At 8/10/2011 5:48 AM (utc) our position was 16°35.94'S 152°37.74'W
http://svsoggypaws.com/currentposition.htm
Do you have a picture of the DDW configuration? I would be interested in seeing it.
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Sabrina
s/v Honey Ryder Caliber 40 LRC - east coast US