Fai Tira Blog Monday 12th April

Fai Tira Still somewhere in the Pacific 10:19.81S 132:07.14W

We were hoping to be a lot closer to our destination of  Fatu Hiva by now, but unfortunately the trade winds we were promised by Tony at our Marquises briefing have failed us for the past four days.  We are now have four hundred miles to go and should arrive either on Thursday or Friday this week three days later than originally estimated.  Last Friday the winds dropped to a measly ten knots or less, and also swung around to the East giving our normal downwind sailing configuration a problem as we couldn’t keep heading in the desired direction, our course was taking us to far South.  We needed to change our sail plan so out came the Cruising Shute.  As you well may remember we had a horrendous wrap around with this sail when we crossed the Atlantic which required me to scale the forestay to untangle it.  This I did but not without an incident where I did an Peter Pan act and went flying across the boat eventually crashing at great speed into the shrouds causing bruising and great pain. Since then we have been wary of this sail, and as we tried to fly it again it was obvious that to keep it from wrapping we would have to sit and nurse it all day.  The decision was made to drop it and put the Genoa out supported by the pole.  Anything for an easy life! We spent the night with this configuration but as the wind died even more, the engine was deployed causing our shift and sleep patterns to be disturbed.   Saturday morning saw no improvement in the wind so we decided to get our Spinnaker out.  In the past we haven’t had much luck with this sail either but we decided to give it a try anyway.  By eight o’clock we had the Genoa furled and the Spinnaker up and flying giving us four to five knots in light winds in the right direction. Yippee.  It is now Monday morning and we still have the Spinnaker deployed and we are still going down the rhumb line to Fatu Hiva.  The forecast is for the wind to increase slightly today, lets hope it does.  The only good part of putting up with light winds is that the weather has been fine with virtually no clouds to speak of.  The sunsets have been spectacular and the astral display stunning.  David our new crew member is very interested in Astronomy and is constantly reading up on subject and educating John and myself on this fascinating subject. We can currently see both the Southern Star and the Great Bear (Plough) in the night sky so we can’t possibly get lost.  The North Star is not visible being Ten degrees below the arisen.  

All our fresh food has either been eaten or thrown overboard.  We are now slowly consuming the remaining tins on board which we have been carrying since we left Dartmouth last August.  John has been trying his hand at being a baker again and produced yet another tasty loaf.  We are eating and drinking well and seem to be in good health.  I think we will all be glad to see land and it’s slightly depressing hearing the reports of other boats already anchored and enjoying the land based pursuits.  This has been a long journey. 

More later. 

Bye for now Pete, John and David.