We Found Some Wind

Last evening it was looking a little grim. We are pretty much out of fuel, except for our last 10 gallons of “get in” fuel in the jerry jugs on deck. By 10 PM the wind had all but quit. The speedometer was bouncing between zero and 0.5 knots. Charisma was pretty much just drifting in slowly spinning circles. But, at 12:01 AM the wind started to fill in. Within minutes we had a whopping 6 knots of wind and were going 3 knots boatspeed. That wind held and the rest of the night we were making between 3 and 4 knots toward Tahiti. Today, the wind increased a bit more, in the 10-15 range and we’re still there at 8PM doing 5-6 knots. Now all we need is for it to go just a bit more south and we can lay Tahiti on this tack. If it doesn’t we’re going to miss Tahiti to the west and we’ll be out here another day or two longer than if we can ride this wind straight in.

So, that’s about the extent of things here. It’s beautiful, the moon is up, sky is pretty clear and we’re just trucking along almost in the right direction. What a difference from the first half of this passage. Good thing there’s a well-known cruisers’ affliction known as “passage amnesia”. We’ve already almost forgotten the terror of the lightning and 50 knot winds.

Almost.