No speed record here

We had high hopes for a reasonably efficient passage to the Marquesas but that’s gone right out the window. Not that we’re complaining. We have fine weather and enough wind to keep us moving more or less in the right direction but gosh, we aren’t even close to the average speed I assumed we would make. We’ll be lucky to arrive by the end of April at this rate. We’re mostly reading, eating and chasing the birds off the bow, trying to keep the boat tidy. It’s so easy on a passage to succumb to lethargy and before you know it you’re living in what looks like a dorm room during finals week. 

Jack has made it his job to keep the boobies off the bow and get the guano stains off. My job is to keep us well fed which is getting to be a challenge as we run out of fresh fruit and the only fresh vegetables left are potatoes, onions, carrots and cabbage, which suggest a heavy Polish or German cuisine rather than the light Mediterranean salads we long for. No matter. We won’t starve. But I plan to O.D. on papayas and mangos once we get to Polynesia. 

If anyone has been writing to us at our Winlink address, we apologize for not answering but we haven’t been able to connect for a long time. We’d been warned that in this area of the Pacific we would have trouble and that seems to be the case. So we aren’t hearing from anyone at that email address, and if you know Drew or Nancy you can write to them and they can forward messages to us. Also, because we can’t connect through Winlink, our position on Winlink and Yotreps hasn’t updated. You can check the Spot and Farkwar links on the right and see if they’re working. 

The sailing is lovely — slow but nice — and even though our weather reports are constantly predicting thunderstorms we haven’t had a one. We did sail through two mild squalls and sometimes we see dark clouds on the horizon but nothing menacing has come near us. We’re running an engine for a couple of hours today to charge up the batteries. Depending on our angle of sail there are days when the solar panels are too shaded to keep us topped up. It’s times like this we wish we also had a wind generator but really for the few times we would actually need it we couldn’t justify the cost. Still, we don’t like to burn the fossil fuel, even if it’s only a gallon or so. 

I made biscuits this morning and when they came out of the oven Jack made us egg and cheese sandwiches. And that’s the news from EV. No ships, no whales or dolphins, no turtles. Only the birds, who have become unwelcome.

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