Underway for the Tuamotus morning of May 28th

10º 54.608s 141º 15.631w

Tue May 28 2019

Underway for Tuamotus 2

JollyDogs morning report 28 May 19

It’s a bummer that some of our emails to friends seem to still be falling into their spam folders. Even some of our tech savvy at-risk youth have told their gmail accounts that our jollydogs@myiridium.net address is “safe”, only to find that our contact attempts have started going back in the spam folders after some lapsed time. Sucks, but there’s nothing more we can do from this end. . .

We’ve shifted ship’s time to UTC – 10 hours to sync with the Tuamotus and Tahiti. As we have no formal watch schedule when it’s just the two of us, at least there’s nothing to erase. I pulled post dinner to 0100, then Isabel did 0100 to around 0530 when I re-emerged from the cave. Now she’s doing her best to sleep and I’m driving the sleigh, and what a sleigh ride it’s been so far! The stars were amazing last night, and the Milky Way almost as bright as moonlight. No squalls on my watch, but Isabel did observe some in the distance and got just a light sprinkle at one point.

We’ve been underway for just over 18 hours since departing Hakahau Bay at Ua Pou. We’ve covered 127 nm at an average speed of 7.0 knots, and things don’t show any sign of lightening up, although the wind is creeping a little farther North since dawn. The sky is clear overhead, only little puffies way out in the distance, and the seas which were around ½ meter on the port beam yesterday and into the night have clocked around more to the Northeast, so we’re not pounding, but we do get a roll with the larger swells which are running around 1 – 1.5 meters, and of course there are longer period swells mixed with wind waves.

We’ve around 390 nm to go to reach Kauehi atoll, and if we post 170 nm days we may just make it through the pass Thursday afternoon, but the forecast shows lightening conditions South so we may not even need to slow the boat down on purpose. Safety procedures and simple prudence have us preferring an early afternoon arrival as that will put the sun at our backs, and we want slack current conditions to make transiting the pass easier to manage. We’ve got a tide “guestimator” spreadsheet to help us sort out the expected currents, but eyeballs will be the best approach. Our pals Andrew and Julia on SV Hullabaloo arrived there this morning, so we’ll find out how it all went for them later today.

Isabel has combed all the various blogs and books that offer suggestions for weather resources in this part of the world, and we’ve got a pile of daily updates to retrieve, digest, then consider whether evasive action is warranted. So far things are looking good, but part of this lifestyle is never relaxing when it comes to what Mother Nature can do to spoil your day, and we’re not talking about our picnic getting rained on here.

The numbers:

S10 58.9’ W141 19.4

COG 209 mag SOG 7.1 knots

TWS 17 from ENE

Baro 1014.4 mb, dropping gently

Seawater temperature 29.5C

Cabin air 29C, RH 63%

All is well with Mark & Isabel!