Passage Hao to Tahiti #03

Another marvelous day, another sunset, another low wind day and we crossed the 1/2 way mark to Tahiti. Its been slow going just putting along. The wind didn’t fill in, but we ran raised the big spinnaker anyway and let it ride for about 5 hrs with the flukey winds. This spinnaker flies from the top of the mast and can still touch the water in front of the boat if it doesn’t stay flying. With the swell and light winds it was collapsing occasionally. On one of those collapses I was looking out window and saw it snag the cleat on the bow. It does that occasionally, and we have swim noodle that is wedged under the cleat to keep it from snagging. Somehow it got in there and the sound of rip-stop nylon ripping as ran to the bow to release the spinnaker. Free’d it and brought the kite down.

Now its got a 3 foot rip at the bottom. Break out the sewing machine and that is what seemed like the project of the day. Christine brought out the spare spinnaker material and the sail tape. We taped it up good and it looks like it’ll hold so holding off on sewing a patch on it. The sail tape needed 1 hour to fully cure. And the wind was still marginal for flying it, decided to just use the jib instead, and put the spinnaker away till we see a solid breeze that will keep the sail full over the waves.

Started messing with the music collection, de-duped and renamed and categorized a whopping 1%, so that means at least 3 months of doing 1% per day. Oh my!

The wind filled in after dinner. Would really like to try the spinnaker now, but its plenty dark since the moon doesn’t wake up till almost daybreak.

All good on board. Staying hydrated as its real hot when there is no breeze, and getting some sleep here and there. Cheers

245 of 498 miles left to go.
[realtime]

At 6/1/2019 @ 3:32 PM UTC
Our position: 17°39.92’S, 145°55.66’W
Traveling 4.9 heading 276T

Google says we are here
www.google.com/maps/place/-17.66533,-145.92767

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