Day 17 - Motoring

Our position as at 20.00 GMT, Monday 27th May:
09 degrees 06 minutes south, 130 degrees 26 minutes west
Distance run in last 24 hours: 140nm

Distance to go 485nm

 

After flying the Parasailor for no less than 31 hours, the wind died yesterday afternoon and we took it down before the rolling of the boat wrapped it around the rig. Since then we've motored through the night at economical speed (5 knots) and this morning have the foresail out to try to catch the light breeze to aid the engine's efforts. The swell has dropped to less than one metre so we're not rolling too much and Dianne is currently making Graham's Mum's recipe for a fruit loaf that doesn't need eggs.

 

Graham has been doing calculations on our fuel consumption and thinks that we don't have quite enough diesel to motor all the way to our destination so we are banking on the forecast of slightly better winds to come back on Wednesday night or Thursday to give us a final spinnaker run into Fatu Hiva, arriving (we think) on Friday at the earliest.

 

The engine is providing us with fully charged batteries and hot water so we're also running the water-maker and doing some clothes washing, though we're banking on there being a laundry ashore for our bedding and towels. We can, once again, see clearly through the pilothouse windows after cleaning them of the encrusted salt (a 25% solution of white vinegar in hot water does the job brilliantly) and the cockpit has benefitted from a fresh-water wash to remove the sticky coating of salt. Most of the other boats on the SSB net have reported big rain showers to do the job for them but so far we've only had about 10 minutes of very light drizzle since Galapagos and much more sunshine than they have experienced.

 

Whistling for the wind, Graham & Dianne