Galapagos to French Polynesia Day 4-11

Day 4,

Great day sailing, wind was blowing around 18 knots true just a
little to the post of dead behind us. With our boat speed we were
able to bring it forward a little. So we are having a great sail so
far.

The current that we have had has now faded away, such that our boat
speed over the water and speed over the ground are the same!! Looks
like the current is pulling us a little south, but that's ok with
our destination being the Tuamotu Atolls. Most of the other boats
out here are sailing for the Marquesas and without sailing dead down
wind they are having a hard time staying north with the south
setting current. Lets hope it changes for them.

Good day sailing we managed to hit 180 miles for the day run.

It was a perfect night sailing, lots of stars, wind dropped off a
little but enough to maintain good boat speed. The seas are real
flat so it's super comfortable!

Still no signs of any other boats/ ships, we seem to be closing on
some of the boats out in front but it will be a while before we pass
them as they are 400 odd miles out in front, we seem to be putting
about 30 miles a day on them.

Day 5.

Pos 04-51.6S, 101-48.2W, SOG 8, COG 241, Distance to go to
Makemo Atoll 2553nm

Another great day, excellent boat speed all day.

Even tried fishing!, lots of bites, managed to hook two Mahi Mahi,
but they were both very small, ( 1.5ft long) they looked quite cute.
We let them go as it would feel like you were eating children, we
will wait and see if we can hook something a little bigger.

Had a bit of current today so that is helping us with our speed over
the ground. Oddly, it still seems to be running south. So much for
the West setting current that we should have!

The wind in the whole area is quite light so what we are not seeing
is the really big ocean swells that we had last time, there just
seems to be a small wind "chop/swell" no real formation or pattern
to them. They are quite small so there is little effect on the boat
movement which is very nice.

Talking with another boat on the radio this morning "Copout" they
are about 400 miles in front. They were saying that they had a very
windy and rough night!, something to look forward to! Winds up in
the 30 knots and big seas. Not much we can do about it so we will
see what we get in a few days hopefully it will have blown forward
and we won't have to deal with it.

Watched the movie XMEN 2 today, while being interrupted by the
fishing lines going off, not a bad movie, way better than "heart
break kid"!

As night came on there was the clearest sky ahead, not a cloud
anywhere, looks like it will be a very clear night! Another night
of clear skies and no squalls!!

Later on... still clear skies but the wind is up, it's blowing in
the mid to high 20's sometimes moving past 30. The swell is up and
it's much rougher. Not bad, just rougher than it was. We pulled in a
bit of the Genoa as we were starting to overload a little. We tend
to back off the boat a bit at night and push a bit harder through
the day when you can see what's going on. And for the life of me we
cannot seem to trim the sails very well after dark, I'm sure there
is a method, but for us we just pull them in a bit, and forget them
until the morning.

Current seems to have backed off, still pushing south but we are not
getting any speed effect from it just an influence in our course,
which is a real bugger it would be nice to have a free knot or so to
help us on our way.

Very clear and starry night, it's awesome how many more stars you
can see in the middle of the ocean, looking up is unreal, there are
just so many stars. And the good thing is that as long as we starts
at night that means no squalls.

No moon out either so it's real dark!!, the cool part of this is we
get to see the phosphorescence coming off the boat as we move
through the water. Every where we disturb the water it emits a green
glow. So coming of the back of Reverie we have this long green
"smoke" trail looks awesome!.

Day 6-11.

Day 11 position 10-43S, 119-47W, SOG 7 knots COG 240M 1430 miles to
go, 1860 behind us!

On long passages all the days seem to blend into together. You get
into a rhythm of the days and night watches and it starts getting
hard working out which day of the week it is.

Also for us on this trip the sailing has been quite bouncy so
sitting down writing on a keyboard has been a little difficult.

Either way we have had a good run so far, we have not had the
current that we had a few years ago, if we did our run rates would
have been awesome.

So far our daily miles have been, 156, 153, 157, 180, 191, 167, 185,
186, 174, 170. Today will be a slow one as the wind has really taken
a break.

Day 6 was a cracker, as we were saying there isn't a lot of wind out
here, we were hit with a day and night of 30-35 knots gusting into
the 40's! it was a great fast bumpy ride. 24 hrs later it drifted
off again. We then had a wonderful calm day.

No fish to report, haven't had the lines out alot so that could be
the reason, but we really need to step up the fishing effort as we
need a lot of fish for when we get into the Tuamotu's as we will not
eat any of the reef fish for fear of poison. So the fishing effort
is in full swing.

Yesterday ( Day 10) we were in the middle of a key moment in the TV
series "Lost" when we heard a strange noise coming from outside.
Jo's first thoughts was a bird sliding down the rigging, Jason's was
some kind of rigging failure.

We jumped outside to find the mainsail all the way down!!, Yep the
Main Halyard broke right up the top where the line ties onto the
shackle which attaches to the mainsail. Seems there is a little
design fault in the mast track and sail top headboard. When the
mainsail is out the side for a broad reach, the knot rubs on the
track and it slowly cuts through the line. Then snappo, the whole
lot comes down!

We were able to thread a line back through the mast put a new
halyard in ( it may have a little more resistance to the rubbing),
We also made a small leather cover for the line where the knot is
for more protection. Three hours later we were back in business.

Looking out ahead it looks like we may be in for some rain and
squalls. There is a band of cloud with solid rain areas in it out in
front and we also can pick up a few squalls on the radar. A bit of
rain would be good as on Day 7 we hit a Reverie record and we picked
up 84 flying fish off the deck!!, in some spots they were a few
inches
deep. Looks like a whole school flew into the boat!@ The boat was
and still is covered with flying fish scales, the dinghy, sail
cover, life lines, everywhere! So hoping for a huge rainstorm just
before we make landfall!!!

At the current rate it looks like we will be arriving into Makemo on
the same date we did three years ago!! 15th May!

P.S.

One thing that we forgot to mention in the Panama City log.

Our Advisor "Manuel" was telling us the bars that we should go out
to in Panama. As it was a Tuesday he said we should go to the "Rock
Cafe" now it's not the hard rock cafe just the "rock cafe".

Manuel said that Tuesday night was ladies night- ladies drink for
free!. Apparently this is how it works on a Tuesday night.

First, between 8 and 11pm ONLY ladies are allowed in, they get free
drinks and a floor show. The floor show is a male strip act!.

Then at 11pm the men are allowed to come in, they pay an $11 cover
charge and have to pay for drinks.

But the whole deal is, they get the ladies drunk first and
"interested" in
the men, then they let the men in!.

What a concept, only in a Latin America culture!

Cheers!
J&J