End of first week

Happy St Patrick's Day to all Irish and not so Irish.

Not much new to report on days 5 and 6. We have sailed at 4 knots in 6 knots of wind with the spinnaker. Each day there has been an hour or two with less than 3 knots of wind under rainy skies, and this has been very frustrating. But last night and this afternoon we are moving between 7 and 8 knots with 15 to 20 knots of wind. When that happens we are encouraged that we will eventually get to the Marguesas. 820 nautical miles of 3000 are currently completed. The faster boats got ahead of these low pressure systems and will arrive well before us. We had hoped to complete the passage in three weeks, but that will be hard given the light winds we have had for most of the trip. We calculated that we have motored 60 hours in the last week in no wind conditions. We will have to watch the amount we motor going forward to conserve fuel.

Have heard that a cyclone has formed near New Zealand- still storm season there. Don't expect it will impact us.

We still have fresh food left so are eating well, probably too much, considering that we don't get much exercise other than keeping our balance. A large fish took all  our fishing line yesterday morning so no more fishing.

We have been lucky that nothing essential has broken yet. Our AIS, which shows other boats on our chart plotter, stopped working a couple of days ago - we believe it is the antenna. We hope to get a new AIS antenna in Tahiti but all the fleet boats are out of it's range anyway. We just check radar instead.

We are now 7 hours earlier than UCT (Greenwich Mean Time), the same time zone as Calgary. The days seem short when you need to nap to make up for the night watches. But we have managed to finish quite a few books.  Good days!