Position: 17 degrees, 08 minutes south; 154 degrees, 04 minutes west (about 130 miles last 24 hours) Sailing this afternoon, watching wave after wave after wave and nothing but blue water as far as I could see, I was struck by how “out there” we really are. We just left a small island, for an even smaller island some 500 miles away where the only entrance into the lagoon is narrow and shallow-maybe too shallow for us to fit. Just thinking.

I’m finally over my almost mal de mer. I didn’t feel very good for most of the first 18 hours of the trip. First touch of seasickness I’ve had in years. But got my sea legs back now.

Yesterday evening a potentially ominous issue came up. Just before sundown I glanced at the solar panel readout and it was dead. Not working. No light. Uh oh! Solar is one of our major sources of energy and it would be very bad if they panels quit working. It was too rough and I didn’t feel good enough to start rooting around in the electronics closet so I decided I’d put off looking at it until morning. Once the sun came up, I consulted the manuals and they said that; “a spike in power can cause the microprocessor to turn off. Disconnect all power and then reconnect, crisply”. Crisply??! Oh well, worth a shot. There is a fuse in the battery compartment under the bed in the quarterberth that delivers the solar power to the battery. I figured I could check it in case that was the problem and at the same time disconnect and reconnect it “crisply” and see if that would work. OK, found it, pulled it, it broke. Now I have to get the pieces of the fuse out of the inline holder (while still feeling a bit poorly inside the rolling boat). I dug them out-even had an extra fuse holder but didn’t feel like dealing with it so used the existing one for now. Found an appropriate fuse, inserted it crisply and voila! The panels came back online. Yay.

The rest of today has been pretty typical passage-making. Eat, sleep, read, enjoy the view. The evening radio nets start in an hour so we’ll be able to see where our various friends are and maybe talk with them. Last night Dave from Camanoe (our friend from Mexico who went to Hawaii when we left for the Marquesas) was on and called us when the net controller asked if there was any “traffic” for Charisma. Alas, his signal was pretty light and we couldn’t find a frequency so just said; “Hi”. Maybe we’ll be able to have a longer conversation tonight. Since he’s still in Hawaii it’s a long way and the ionosphere has to be just right to bounce the signal all the way down here.

So, there you have it. About three days to go (hopefully) to our next island. Position: 17 degrees, 08 minutes south; 154 degrees, 04 minutes west (about 130 miles last 24 hours) Sailing this afternoon, watching wave after wave after wave and nothing but blue water as far as I could see, I was struck by how “out there” we really are. We just left a small island, for an even smaller island some 500 miles away where the only entrance into the lagoon is narrow and shallow-maybe too shallow for us to fit. Just thinking.

I’m finally over my almost mal de mer. I didn’t feel very good for most of the first 18 hours of the trip. First touch of seasickness I’ve had in years. But got my sea legs back now.

Yesterday evening a potentially ominous issue came up. Just before sundown I glanced at the solar panel readout and it was dead. Not working. No light. Uh oh! Solar is one of our major sources of energy and it would be very bad if they panels quit working. It was too rough and I didn’t feel good enough to start rooting around in the electronics closet so I decided I’d put off looking at it until morning. Once the sun came up, I consulted the manuals and they said that; “a spike in power can cause the microprocessor to turn off. Disconnect all power and then reconnect, crisply”. Crisply??! Oh well, worth a shot. There is a fuse in the battery compartment under the bed in the quarterberth that delivers the solar power to the battery. I figured I could check it in case that was the problem and at the same time disconnect and reconnect it “crisply” and see if that would work. OK, found it, pulled it, it broke. Now I have to get the pieces of the fuse out of the inline holder (while still feeling a bit poorly inside the rolling boat). I dug them out-even had an extra fuse holder but didn’t feel like dealing with it so used the existing one for now. Found an appropriate fuse, inserted it crisply and voila! The panels came back online. Yay.

The rest of today has been pretty typical passage-making. Eat, sleep, read, enjoy the view. The evening radio nets start in an hour so we’ll be able to see where our various friends are and maybe talk with them. Last night Dave from Camanoe (our friend from Mexico who went to Hawaii when we left for the Marquesas) was on and called us when the net controller asked if there was any “traffic” for Charisma. Alas, his signal was pretty light and we couldn’t find a frequency so just said; “Hi”. Maybe we’ll be able to have a longer conversation tonight. Since he’s still in Hawaii it’s a long way and the ionosphere has to be just right to bounce the signal all the way down here.

So, there you have it. About three days to go (hopefully) to our next island.