Position: 17 degrees 39 minutes south; 149 degrees, 54 minutes west 91 NM

Right from the “Johnnie Joe School of Cruising Handbook”, Chapter Three on fuel management and planning. And I quote: “Fuel management isn’t hard. You just load ‘er down like the Exxon Valdez with all the diesel you can get aboard, then run ‘er hard. If ya got any fuel left when ya get there, then ya didn’t run ‘er enough”

Well, we get an “A” from the Johnnie Joe school, because at 0130 in the morning the engine went brrrat, brrart, pblpppt. And all was quiet. We drained out the last drop from the tank. Well, at least now we now know exactly how much we have left. Fortunately that means 10 gallons, which is our on deck jerry jug supply. So, we took a few moments to settle down, had a little something to eat, drank a bit of coffee and then set about siphoning the jugs into the tank, draining the crud out of the Racor, changing the filter, then crack the injectors and bleed the lines. We’re getting proficient at this as it only took us about an hour.

OK, now we have to sail most of the rest of the way. Fortunately the time spent motoring last night got us into a position where by sailing all day, we’re now six miles away from the SE point of Moorea, just across from Tahiti. We’re going to tack in a few and go across to Tahiti, then heave to for the rest of the night (it’s 1830 local NZ time) and at sunrise, which is about 0430 local NZ time we’ll head down the channel the last ten miles to Papeete. At least that’s the plan right now. When the moon comes up it may give us enough light – and confidence to head closer to Papeete tonight. We’ll still stand offshore, but the reason we’re not going closer for now is there are a lot of lights here and it’s not very clear what’s a stop light on shore and what might be a ferry boat or fishing boat. Better to just hang and go in with the vis is better.

Landfall!

So that was our day. Oh – one highlight was seeing Ann’s face this morning when she came up from her off watch. The sun was up and she said, “Good morning”, then turned around and there in front of us was the mountain studded island of Moorea looking for all the world like it was just a few miles away. It was actually still 35 miles out, but the beaming smile that broke out on Ann’s face made the whole day worth it.

Here's our path approaching Tahiti (on the right, Moorea on the left). We had to stand out waiting for some wind since we didn't have enough fuel to make it all the way in from here.