Position 1800 UTC - 13th June 2020
- 06 degrees, 52 minutes South
- 123 degrees, 26 minutes West
Sailing on port tack full sails with wind at 130 degrees apparent
Sea State: 2m swell with wind chop
Wind: 17 knots from East South East
Speed over the ground: 7.3 knots
Course over the ground: 250 degrees
Distance sailed towards north Marquesas in 24 hours 177
Well I think the birthday at sea went pretty well, the beautiful day continued and we sailed wing on wing all day into the evening before pulling the genoa over to the port side to stiffen things up overnight. The birthday haircut went okay and by the time we get to a port no-one will ever know its a bit wobbly and perhaps even some of the hair clippings that blew downwind all over the boat might have been wash off. I made chocolate brownies but the candle on top was perhaps a bit of a stretch for the wind.
We have made another time zone change - it's now just under 1,000 miles to the marquesas,3,000 to Samoa and 5,000 to Brisbane. Oh and 2,000 back to Isabela.
The moon overnight is now half and rises much later so for a big portion of the night we get to marvel at the stars and the last couple of nights they have been nothing less than spectacular. Out here the sky is so clear they virtually come right down to the ocean, the milky way is so cloudy and brimming with stars you sometimes struggle to make out the southern cross - just incredible. Last night on top of that around 3am I spotted a strange red streak to the northwest that was visable for several seconds, like a row of red lights or a reflection. On Andrew's watch he had Japanese fishing boat appear on AIS at our stern about 15 miles so it may have been linked to that but I'm still believing it was a UFO or a new planet no one else has ever seen.....
We are really hoping for a fish today or it's veggie Saturday; that's fine as we are still overflowing with veg. The green peppers and tomatoes are still looking as good as you'd buy in a supermarket at home. The lettuce is even still going well amazingly and we ate the last of the basil yesterday. Yes there's still oranges and the last few very mushy bananas will go in a smoothie tomorrow.
Andrew is still really wanting to sail directly to Australia - we are definitely going well enough to do it and it would be a great accomplishment and to meet up with our friends in Queensland would be amazing. However, we have heard international tourism is scheduled to open in French Polynesia in July (although no specific mention of boats) so I am ever hopeful that we might get to visit and started learning French and reading about waterfall hikes and diving in FP. We plan to contact the Tahiti Government next week to request approval to visit FP. If we can make a stop we will. We just know one thing - it's all good options from here and there will be fun and rum in the sun with palm trees wherever we make landfall.
Love from the big blue x
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