Getting close. Forgot to send and update yesterday, but all is well. Yesterday the weather did as forecast actually predicted. Died completely, the water was so glassy smooth it was hard to tell where the water became sky. I dropped a 2 lb weight on the fishing line down 50+ feet a could see it clear as day. The water is that clear and the surface that smooth.
No wind, no waves so the engine was running, Oh well that is what the forecast called for and we did have a great time in Gambier postponing the trip north long and longer. We could have left on Monday, as that is when the forecast looked marginally better. Now with hindsight, if we had waited till Monday we would have had zero wind until it was blowing on the nose for the second part of the trip. We are out ahead of that fun.
Taking naps, eating food, checking the horizon and instruments keep the days going. Christine is watching a some of the movies we have on the hard drive, eliminating the duplicates and organizing everything. I fixed the oven/stove automatic lighter again. Course I completely disassembled it completely, had the electrical tester out trying to find the cause. Seemed to point to the piazzo igniter, but as a last resort I tried another battery and voila. Back in business. For the record, I had already tried to batteries previously and tested them with the tester they all had juice all the way to the igniter. Oh well, new battery and sparky is lighting up again.
Now on track for a morning arrival at sunrise and hopefully at ‘slack’ tide to make entering the atoll easy as the passes or entrances can be challenging with currents, based on tide and weather. So you are never supposed to arrive new ports at night, here the second challenge is timing the tide and then add in the need for sunlight high in the sky to see the coral heads after you enter the lagoon. All part of the life.
Boat sails pretty good in light winds, something we haven’t had much practice in, we are managing 90% of wind speed in boat speed today so the engine has been given a break. We shall see how long.
60 of 452 miles left to go. [realtime]
At 5/22/2019 @ 2:17 AM UTC Our position: 18°40.96’S, 140°15.19’W Traveling 5.3 heading 314T
Google says we are here www.google.com/maps/place/-18.68267,-140.25317
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