Day 14 - 06 51.62S 129 02.58W

Aurora_b
Mike and Liz Downing
Fri 14 May 2010 00:49
The wind has come round to the east south east and eased, allowing us to head in a south westerly direction, in fact head straight for the Marquesas for the first time. The islands we are going to are located at around 10 degrees south and we are currently at 7 degrees south, so we're slowly working our way down. The sea has dropped today as well as the wind and it's been a good sailing day, with mostly sunny skies. We still get squalls and had one earlier today. It produced more wind and heavy rain, but only for 10 minutes or so and then it was gone and the sun came out again. Our noon to noon run was 159 miles - not bad considering most of yesterday afternoon we were still searching for the fuel leak and only had a headsail up. Having sailed 2,334 miles, we have just over 600 to go.

The fuel tank is still leaking, but the leak is a lot slower now. It could be that the fracture (if that's what it is) is in the top half of the tank or that we are not rolling so much, or, as someone else suggested, there is less pressure in the tank. Whatever the reason we hope it stays that way so we have some fuel to enable us to anchor.

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