Position: 21 degrees, 21 minutes south; 155 degrees, 16 minutes west 112 nm (motored all night)

Today was one of those days that make you forget about the other ones. Blue sky, blue water, and warm weather. It would have been perfect with just a touch more wind. We’ve had about 6 knots of wind most of the day and are able to make about 3 knots boat speed out of that. Sometimes we stretch to 4 knots. We’re hoping for a tad more wind tomorrow, but nice to have calm conditions after chasing that low across the Southern Ocean. Now we’re in a high, so the air is more stable and we don’t worry (as much) about crazy squalls and stuff. We actually have no reefs in the main for the first time in over two weeks and we changed jibs to “the whomper”, our really big jib. The other nice thing about the change in weather – we have stowed the long underwear. We’re definitely in the tropics now, so have been all day in shorts, tee-shirt and flip flops. Nice.

Oh yeah, the green flash. This evening watching the sun go down I noticed the clarity around the horizon and said to Ann, “Watch for the green flash” (you’ll have to google the reason for this – too long to explain). She turned and we counted down, watched the sun dip and…blam, the biggest green flash either of us has seen. The sun disappeared and a second later this huge flash of fluorescent green lit up where the sun was. We were both so stunned we started cheering. A great end to a gorgeous day.

But wait, there’s more! Two hours later, the glow of the moon on the horizon announced an imminent appearance. Ann shouted, “Charisma time!” and I ran below to prepare our evening concoction. Got ’em done just in time to celebrate the moonrise with our favorite cocktail.

So, we’re 373 nm out of Papeete as of this writing. That’s the good news. The not as good is we’ve about used up our fuel and have light winds for at least the next four days, so if the wind dies, so does our speed. (We’re doing 2.3 knots right this moment). We might average 80 or so miles a day, so we’re still some days out. And, the wind looks to be heading us – meaning that at some point it may force us away from our destination. We’re trying to get “some easting” in right now and hope for the best.

It’s all part of sailing. At least it’s warm.

Evening. The sun has set. The remains of its warm glow have given way to the deep blue of the night. There is not a cloud in the sky, nor a whisper of wind. Nothing disturbs the horizon vying for our attention.

We are in a perfect, limitless amphitheater. The water’s smooth, gently undulating surface perfectly reflects the stars. The horizon is an indistinct blur vaguely suggesting a transition from sea to sky.

We feel as if we are floating on a sea of stars.

The moon boasting of its fullness tonight, rose with a gentle, golden glow. Higher now, it has turned an almost blinding platinum in the dark night. Only the most confident stars are visible beyond its glow. Below it, leads a shimmering path across the ocean. Perhaps leading to infinity on such a night, in such a place.

We can only feel honored and at the same time humbled in being here.

Postion: 22 degrees, 21 minutes south; 156 degrees, 44 minutes west 143 nm day (motor-sailing, no wind)

This afternoon, two bright white birds, looking for all the world like white doves appeared out of nowhere and flew around and around us – four, five, maybe six times as if there were bringing a message of peace-“We’re sorry, we didn’t mean to be so rough the other night”.

Thank you. We accept.

Position: 23 degrees, 40 minutes south; 158 degrees, 48 minutes west 67 nm day

Whew, thank goodness we got an easy day today. We’re both exhausted after last night’s events. This morning brought some unsettled looking weather (again), but it turned out pretty benign. All day, there has been little or no wind. We have been motoring since morning (it’s after dinner right now) and we expect we’ll continue to motor through tomorrow sometime, maybe even the next day. That’s probably getting pretty close to the extent of our fuel though, so we’re hoping the wind fills in for the final stretch. It should fill in from the south and then south east Thursday for a few days, so cross fingers.

This shows our planned route(s) versus actual. The "bottom" route was the original. The next higher was our modified for weather avoidance. The actual is shown by the triangle representing our boat and the dotted line behind it. Snarky weather and ENE wind are pushing us toward Tahiti instead of letting us go east to Tubuai...so we'll go where the wind lets us.

Oh, I don’t know if I mentioned we decided to just bypass Tubuai and go direct Tahiti at this point. We’re currently about 600 miles to go.

That and the beautiful almost full moon we see tonight for the first time in three or four days is about all the news for now.

P.S. Thanks to everyone for your comments. We enjoy ready them in the evenings. Some of you are either new or on new computers, so if you don’t see your comment, it’s because I have to “moderate” i.e. approve the post. I can’t do that until we get internet access in Tahiti and approve you. Once approved all your comments will go through with no further action required. Meanwhile we still are receiving them and enjoying them.

Position: 24 degrees, 13 minutes south; 159 degrees, 45 minutes west

…and rain and wind!! We won the trifecta.

Yesterday around 5PM local NZ time, we saw some lightning off in the distance, downwind of us. It seemed to be clearing where we were so I didn’t think too much of it until half an hour later I noticed the whole sky was rapidly clouding over and the lightning was getting closer. Holy cow!! It turned into the biggest lightning storm we have ever seen. For five hours we were trying to avoid cells by tracking on the radar and adjusting course. We sailed upwind hoping to get “above” the line, but there wasn’t a line, it just appeared everywhere at once and enveloped us. After an hour or two there was no-where we could go that there weren’t lightning bolts. At one point we sailed between two bolts that struck the water on either side of us. It wasn’t pretty. And it rained. Poured, actually. So hard and noisy you couldn’t hear yourself think.

Then, after five hours of insanity, suddenly the wind died down. I went forward to tighten the preventer and as I got back to the cockpit it quickly started building and by time I got to the helm to adjust our course (the wind changed direction about 90 degrees I think, it was all confusion by this time) and in ten seconds was blowing 40++ knots (at one point during a relative “lull”, I measured 43 knots at the deck with a hand held). The gale driven raindrops were like a thousand BB gun shots on your face. Charisma went crazy as I struggled to find a groove where she’d settle down. Fortunately we only had the third reef in the main and a little storm jib. I steered downwind to lessen the load on the rig, and we went surfing away. If the sail had been any bigger, we would have blown it out for sure. I have no idea how fast we were going as I couldn’t take my attention off the red glow of the compass for even a moment without risking careening out of control. After maybe ten minutes I realized this was no ordinary squall and it wasn’t going to blow out, so waited for a slight lull and threw the helm over to round up and (hopefully) get Charisma to heave to. We turned and heeled until the water was up to the cabin, but she came up and settled. A little. Problem at this point, she doesn’t really heave to with any kind of jib up. I had to go up to the bow and take the storm jib down. Took me a few minutes to psych myself up for that one, but finally left the relative safety of the cockpit. Yipes. The wind was blowing so hard it literally felt like it was going to lift me out of the boat. I crawled. 37 feet. One hand hold at a time. Finally with Ann’s expert help managing the lines, I got the jib down and secure and we spent the next roughly four hours riding it and wondering where the heck this beast came from?

Wow, what a night. Don’t want to E V E R do that again. Charisma did really well. We’re both a little shaken and just riding hove to in the early morning with the wind now around 10 knots, catching up on some sleep and cleaning up in anticipation of getting going in another hour to two after the morning net at 0715 local. Then we’ll do a boat inspection to check on any damage and see about moving on.