Less than 2000 miles to go

Sunday 16th March

Really very little to say today, just another day trade wind sailing! Weather is still great, the wind is ESE around 16 knots. It is pushing us a little further south than the ideal course from here, but thats OK as we are keeping our speed up around 7-7.5 knots. I still have 1 reef in the main and the full genoa out. This is an easy rig to furl or reef further if needed. Talking of here, we now have only 1895 miles to go, the voyage is flying by. The leading boats are about 350 miles ahead, but I presume you can all see that on the web.

We are still having battery problems, in that we need to run the generator each night to keep up the voltage. Mind you I did find the radar left on the last few nights, and this drain battery power rapidly. I think that is why the freezer went down, the voltage was too low to run the compressor. I realise now that of course this is exactly what was causing the battery problems on the Atlantic crossing. You live and hopefully learn. I just hope that we haven't damaged the batteries.

Val & I have started planning out an itinerary of the islands, and I have booked a place on the marina in Tahiti and again in Musket Cove in Fiji. We plan to have time to look around, dive and snorkel as well as sight seeing on land. They all look so beautiful, we dont know which ones to go to. I can see why people spend years just cruising around the Pacific islands. We are not going near places like Easter Island or Pitcairn Island or the Hawiian area, the Line islands or so many others.

I am keeping the back water tank filled up twice a day in case of breakdown of the de-salinator. Its a real gem. we do also have about 200 litres of bottled water in the bilges as an emergency back-up supply.

As I am writing this, Shin is in the galley preparing pizza for dinner and I do mean preparing. He has made up the base dough and we are having a chicken topping with other delicious items as well. I made pitta bread sandwiches for lunch with tuna, salad and tomato filling. It must have been OK as I had to make an extra lot after the 1st got eaten.