Even the equipment is counting down to landing...

Tuesday 25th March

Its 8.00 PM here and we have just finished another of Shin's curries. Very tasty indeed. We all keep telling him about this restaurant he is going to open somewhere. No menu, just accept whatever comes from the kitchen.

Its now 4 to 1 in the fishes favour. A lovely Dorado of about 6 kilos jumped onto the line. As soon as it was in the bin Shin dealt with it.

I spoke too soon the other day, yesterday evening the watermaker refused to start. I can't fathom the problem and have been in touch with the maker in Italy. He suggested a couple of things to try, but to no avail. I suspect an electronic component has failed. I'm not too sure how we're going to fix it out here, maybe in Tahiti. We'll just have to carry lots of water.

The wind has been building all evening and is now around 20-22 knots as predicted by Bruce, so we are going along at around 8 knots with a reef in both the mainsail and the genoa.We have 377 miles to run at the moment, and we are all looking forward to dropping the anchor and going ashore in Hiva Oa. ETA is Friday morning.

The batteries are definitely not holding their charge properly, we are down to 4 hourly charging, using the generator during daylight and the engine in the middle of the night so as not to overheat the forward cabin.

I emailed the Swiss charter boat operator we met in Martinique. He has a Jeanneau 49 also. He broke his boom during the ARC and was alongside us in the dock. He too has had rudder problems and some sort of keel problem as well. He is hoping to get Jeanneau to help out with warranty.

I'm on watch from 6 to 9 AM amd Val is on the 3 hours before me. As I'm down in the saloon writing this the wind has increased again, so I think we'll roll up some more of the genoa for the night. It makes the boat more comfortable and doesn't affect the speed very much.