Too close...

Lat: 9 deg 15' Long: 138 deg 23' 17.30 local time May 31 2006

At this moment we are only 60 nm from Hiva Oa and Tahuku bay. Local time (UTC -9h30m) is half past five pm and we have had some fantastic sailing today. So we are ahead of schedule and trying to slow down. We don't want to arrive in the middle of the night. The Genoa is down and two reefs in the mainsail and we still do some five knots. I guess we will have to heave to for 5-6 hours later this evening. The night before, when the wind increased, the hull mounting for the wind vane was torn off on the starboard side. I must say that the servo pendulum produces a lot of power. There's no way we could fix this while sailing in the middle of the night, so back to steering by hand. It was a clear night so the twinkling stars made navigation easy. Rather exiting to steer when it's all dark except for the sky. You don't see the waves, you just feel them through the boat and hear them, and sometimes get wet through the spray.
Today the old electric Auto helm was taken back in service again. It had to be repaired, but now it seems to work fine, a nice piece of equipment.
We saw the first yacht today. On the VHF we learned that it was the Horizontal with crew, from down under, coming from Galapagos and heading for Nuku Hiva. It felt good to meet another yacht. They are going pretty much the same way we are so maybe we'll meet them again.
The watches were turned to local standard time today. The sun went down 17.22!!

H�kan

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com