On route to Marquises - 3 to 4 Days to go

Posted 22 April 2011

We are still doing fine, just a very long passage. Dinis enjoys the solitude and the tranquility of the passage much more than me. I much prefer coastal cruising and shorter passages. This is our longest passage in our planned circumnavigation. We saw dolphins twice, saw lots of flying fish, some birds and 1 fishing vessel, other than that a pretty quite and uneventful trip.

The weather is good with light winds (8 to 15 knots) most of the time. We had a few more squalls, but all in all great weather. The days are mostly overcast with the temperature from 27 to 31 degrees Celsius. This is much cooler than we had in Galapagos and Central America.

The south sub-tropical current is in our favour with 1 to 2 knots per hour. This adds 20 to 40 nm per day to our distance traveled. Our best 24 hr run is 160 nm.

We are still sailing with our twin head sail configuration. We have our staysail poled out to the windward with the spinnaker pole and the genoa to leeward with the sheet supported by the end of the boom. This works great as we only have to furl the genoa when the winds increase.

The Marquises Islands are French Territory and consist of 12 volcanic islands. 3 of the Islands have facilities for checking in and out. We are heading for Hiva-Oa island. This island is on the southern part of the group of islands. The city name is Atuona.

All the 'Rock and Roll' motion of the boat had a positive impact on our waistlines. Both Dinis and myself are a little bit more toned since we left the Galapagos.