Marquesas Passage: Days 8, 9, 10 and 11

Bob getting ready to clean hull!

No wind - calm seas!

The wind finally picked up for us and we had two good days of sailing with speeds up to 8.2 knots. We began to believe that our strategy of motoring south during the light wind days to reach the southeast trade winds around 7 degrees south latitude had paid off. Wrong! The third day and night we had no wind above 6 knots. Yesterday we motored for three hours to try to find some wind however that proved fruitless, and we resigned ourselves to drifting with the current - just over 1 knot. While doing that Bob cleaned some early stage barnacles off the hull of our boat (tethered to the boat of course} and Carol did some minor sail repair. We also spent several hours making water and now have two full water tanks. That should last us for the rest of this trip. While we are in no danger of starving, Carol has starting budgeting our remaining food supplies to ensure we arrive before the food runs out! Eventually the wind increased to 7/8 knots and we could at least sail, although not quickly.

We haven't seen a lot of wildlife so far, although yesterday morning at dawn we had a whole pod of dolphins swimming along beside the boat - could have been fifty or more. It was fun to watch them. Other boats have reported seeing whales, so we are keeping our eyes open.

At the end of ten complete days (noon on March 20) we had covered 1215 nautical miles. The eleventh day will be our slowest, and when we measure our distance traveled in the twenty-four hours up to noon today we will likely be only around 85 miles further ahead. The weather forecast calls for winds to pick up tonight and stay relatively good for the coming week. That will be very welcome if it occurs, and will give us a chance of reaching the Marquesas in reasonable time.

For the past two nights we have been sailing in the company of two other sailboats, one from our rally and the other being a Norwegian boat with a young couple (25 years old) aboard. It's been nice to see their lights at night, and their sails during the day, as well as to talk to them.  While all boats on this track are heading to the same destination, it is remarkable that after sailing twelve hundred miles we would end up within a few miles of each other. There are a number of rally boats within fifty miles of us, but there are four that are well ahead, two at least a day ahead of us, and two at least two days ahead. They sailed west while we headed south for the first few days! We did the same thing on our trip to the Galapagos following conventional wisdom and weather reporting and with similar results. Next trip we might just follow them!

Having commented about the sailboats out here, last evening a very large well lit boat passed just in front of us. We couldn't make out what kind of vessel it was in the dark but found it unusual that it would be traveling south from our position. This morning a large commercial fishing boat, the Kokei Maru, (sounds Japanese) passed within a mile of us.  We're now thinking that the boat last night was either a larger fishing boat, or more likely a fish processing boat. We had made enquiries about getting a new AIS antenna in Tahiti and found out that a VHF antenna should work. We had a small spare for that and it worked for seeing this ship. We'll still need a better one to see the smaller sailboats further away.

So far our experience on the Pacific has been so different from sailing in the Caribbean where we could always count on winds in the 15-20 knot range with commensurate sea heights. We haven't seen much in the way of significant waves yet, although there is almost always a long gentle swell. It is a mild El Nino year so the weather patterns are different than usual. We have been expecting to get an enhanced swell from the cyclone that hit Vanuuatu and area last week, however haven't experienced anything unusual as of yet. We are planning to be in Vanuuatu in August, where the cyclone caused much damage and loss of life. Our rally organizers

are already working on things that we can do to assist once we arrive there.