Turn The Page ~ Day 18 to the Marquesas
Balvenie
Mark Farrell & Amanda Church
Sun 9 Aug 2015 01:24
|
08 August 2015
~ Position 09 27S 134 39W at 1730 UTC, 0930 Boat Time (Alaska Time)
0530 tomorrow NZ Time.
Course Over Ground 285dT, Speed Over Ground
5.1 knots, 24 hour run 138 miles again. Clear skies and starry
night again, wind dropped out to around 10kts and gone to the NE.
Sails up, down, in, out, course this way, that way, this way again, gype, gybe
back as the wind and swell changes, hard work.
Todays big news is that skipper is very
happy with the English Cricket Team and thanks to those with updates, made his
day. And that basically is all the news, nothing is happening out
here.
We can now hear the Polynesian sector of our
radio Magnet and are listening to boats that came through much earlier than us
check in enroute to Samoa, Cook Islands, Tonga and other South West Pacific
treasures. At last we do actually feel that we have turned the page and
arrived at the final chapter of our circumnavigation. The Caribbean and
Americas are far behind us, Polynesia awaits.
Yet another fish free 24 hours, mind you we
are going so slow now that our lure does not look so appealing. I found
another "passage meal" in the freezer earlier, think it is surely the
last. While cooking dinners in the Galapagos I would cook for four and
freeze a meal, I didn't label any of them so it has been quite nice not
knowing what was for dinner until it was time to tip it in a pot and heat it
up.
For those of you querying our change of
arrival from Fatu Hiva to Tahuata (and there have been a few of you!) as we are
staying in the Marquesas for some time we have decided to do our check in first
and then we can pick a quiet day to get south to Fatu Hiva and then we can
happily stay as long as we want, so thats the reasoning, but thanks for the
reminders that we should not miss Fatu Hiva.
ARE WE NEARLY THERE YET? Well,
it's 5.15pm local time now and the GPS tells us we now have 229 miles to go, we
have had the wind drop out this afternoon, as low as 4 knots and currently just
6 knots, we have dropped the main as it was banging around too much in the
swell, and running with headsail poled to windwind and staysail on leeward, we
are managing 3 knots, could be a long 229 miles!!!! tick tock, tick
tock.
You can see our progress on a map on
our mailasail blog.
Position at 0130UTC when sent via satphone
09 34.07S 135 10.76W |