Position: 18 degrees, 00 minutes south; 151 degrees, 21 minutes west 107 nm

The “distance to waypoint” on the GPS just switched to 100.9 miles! Wow, we are almost there. Back to Tahiti. Our memories of Tahiti are not full of tropical evenings and exotic landscapes. We have a few of those memories, but Tahiti meant being at the quay in noisy Papeete waiting for medical news. Our dear friend had had a diving “incident” in the Tuamotos and was being looked at in Papeete. It was a tense time. Thank God he is fine. Tahiti, and sailing to it, has always been on Bob’s list. Ever since he was a young boy following the travels of Robin Lee Graham in the National Geographic series. I heard about this desire early in our relationship. It went like this (on about date five): Bob – “I’m going to sail to the South Pacific in 2012. You can come too if you want. I mean I would like it if you did.” Seriously, he was that determined. He had hit his “Make it Happen” point. Tahiti, just saying the word out loud was my “Make it Happen” point. I enjoy a Facebook group called Women Who Sail. It is full of wonderful women interested in sailing. I think over half of the posts include angst from these women on how to make it happen. We dream about doing this but getting there is different. I never dreamed I’d be here. But saying “Tahiti” made it happen. I walked into my boss’s office at 3 o’clock on a Friday afternoon. Timing was important. I told him I needed to talk and he invited me to sit. I looked up and with tears in my eyes, it was a scary moment, I said, “Jim, there is no easy way to say this so I will just blurt it out. I am sailing to Tahiti.” His look was one of confusion. What? I clarified. “That means I need to quit.” Well that got his attention. He sat up straighter in his chair and said, “Holy crap, shit, that means you’re taking Bob!” I had worked for him for 17 years. Bob was our most prized consultant that I was dating. “Well, not really, he is taking me!” To his credit Jim gave me a huge smile and nearly jumped out of his seat to hug me. Oh my God! How exciting! Wow! And I stopped the tears of fear. I had done it. I said the word, “Tahiti” and now there was no turning back. It was going to happen. Jim stuck his head in my office as he left for the weekend. He still had that huge grin on his face. “I am so very excited for you…today. But come Monday after all of the implications have set in over the weekend I will be hating you. Have a great weekend.” So here we are, returning to Tahiti. Making it happen still. Time to go put the champagne in the fridge.

(From Bob) OK, on the sailing front, we’re still not “laying” Tahiti, more like Bora Bora, so I decided to follow the “Johnnie Joe School of Cruising” advice and “Run ‘er till she’s empty”. Yup we’re motor sailing for all we’re worth in order to head direct. If we just kept sailing, we would have to go around the west side of Moorea and then tack somewhere northwest of Tahiti. I would add at least a day, if not two to the passage. I’ve estimated we have about 20 hours of fuel in the tank, so we’re running 15 hours then we’ll shut down and sail a while and see where we are. Unless my estimate and/or our consumption is off. If things all of a sudden get quiet, we’ll know where we stand. We have ten gallons in jerry jugs on the deck, so when we’re well within that range, we’ll dump those in the tank and use that for the final push.