1172 miles to go

Hello all with 1172 miles remaining till we see land again!!!!! 

It's 1am on Saturday July 2nd as I write this. We are at position 06° 16' south and 119° 38'

 west. Winds are light 5 to 10 knots from behind us as we continue straight on the rumb line

 for Marquesas.

With the winds this light and in rolling seas we have taken down the spinnaker as it just 

ends up flogging and have opted to motor for the last roughly 32 hours straight. As a sailor

 it kills me to motor and I hate doing it.....but if I did not we would all go crazy going 

so slow....and I would surely be lynched by the crew or worse voted off "the island of 

Coolrunnings"!!!!! 

We can motor non stop at low RPM's (1800) for about 8 days and nights which gives us a motor

 range of about 800 to 1000 miles assuming easy seas. If we had to motor directly into heavy

 seas you can likely halve that range. Luckily we are motoring with the swells and winds 

which helps! Base   d on  the weather outlook we may only get wind again on Sunday so will 

likely keep motoring another 24 to 36 hours. We monitor fuel use and engine hours very 

carefully. The beauty of a catamaran is we have two diesel engines and only use one at a 

time to do this kind of motoring. 

The engines are work horses and keep running steadily for days and days if needed. We had a 

little scare late yesterday afternoon as we motored along. I was in the shower when the 

engine went from 1800 RPM's to 0....(along with my heart)......it just stopped for no 

apparent reason. I quickly made it up on deck and we suspected Gaby whom was sitting at the 

helm station had accidentally hit the stop button ....but we opened up the engine room and 

checked everything was ok before attempting a restart. After verifying all looked normal we 

fired her up and sure enough she purred to life....phew....We all celebrated!!!!

Thank goodness the last few days have gone well and the seas finally subsided  late 

yesterday afternoon with the light winds. In celebration we broke out a big steak from the 

freezer and had a wonderful bbq/braai!!! Followed by our 1st movie night at sea. 

Unfortunately adults and kids could not agree on a movie so kids watched "night in the 

museum" in Ben's cabin and adults watched "borat" in the salon. It was fun and by 9pm the 

movie was done and we were tired and off we went to bed and respective night watches started. 

Guds had the 1st shift. 

Motoring on nightshift is easy as there are no sails to watch over....All you have is the 

constant purr of the engine...make sure the autopilot is on course....watch for shooting 

stars ;) On last night's watch I saw 4 shooting stars. If you are not writing emails and 

just look out you are almost guaranteed of seeing at least one or two ;)

Well not much else to update on at this stage....same old same old way out at sea in the 

vast Pacific ocean ;)

All the best to everyone and hap   py 4th  July weekend to all in the USA!!!!! 

We will miss the always spectacular fireworks and I have contemplated foreign off and old 

flare for our 4th July....no one out here to see it....so still thinking it over:)

Thanks as always for your blog comments, emails and well wishes!!

Picture attached of our BBQ dinner ;)

Kind regards
Dave

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