Mar 27 Enroute to Pitcairn Island

Position S28deg31min/W116deg39min. Day 3 and 4's 24 hour run (in nautical miles, respectively) was 113 and 104; possibly giving you an idea of conditions reflected in these numbers. Yesterday, for example, we motored for 19 hours in an effort to find any wind to sail; it had remained around 4 knots. Moving this 36000 pound boat in winds of 4 to 5 knots is especially difficult, and coupled with big swells is a lousy way to go. The sails slat around, and the boat just doesn't make good headway. We finally picked up a decent light breeze (less than 8 knots) late this afternoon, but it's still slow going (a glance at the meter reading wind speed says 4.5 knots true wind) and we've been going anywhere from 0-3.8 knots boat speed. We don't carry enough diesel to motor all the way to Pitcairn, yet alone have the desire to do so, so we'll endure the light wind conditions and be thankful we had a bit of them rather than too strong a wind that honks up and causes all hell to break loose. Meanwhile, we've put a few small sail patches in some areas of chafe in the mainsail and are getting more familiar with some of the intricacies of our MaxSea navigation software, which we're using at this time rather than our other program, Coastal Explorer. Btw, if anyone who knows our SailMail address would be kind enough to email and let us know if our daily blog entries have been posted, we'd appreciate it. We've been sending them thru the Chile SailMail station, and just received an email stating that the station's dial-up modem had been out, so we don't know if our daily blog has made it into the ether zone or not. We're slowly getting to Pitcairn; all's well.

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