Day 19: Pacific Crossing to Marquesas, French Polynesia

A tired crew this morning after last night’s squall line that played with us until it finally spit us out around 9am.  Seas calmed, winds calmed, sun out and patchy white clouds on blue sky background.  We are motoring along today on one engine, ensuring fuel conservation.

Regarding fuel, we have two 60 gallon tanks for diesel, as well as 40 gallons in jerry jugs.  This fuel is for our two engines, as well as our generator that is used to make water and top off our batteries.  We’ve needed to use the generator more than we anticipated to charge our batteries (it uses 0.4 gallons/hour diesel) due to cloud cover and the sails also shading our solar panels in the setting of our high energy use out here.  We have 880 amp hour battery bank.  We have 1200 watts of solar panels, which can cover all our energy needs in a sunny anchorage.  However, out here it is not keeping up with the almost constant use of Auto-Pilot and electronics.  Other big electrical sucks are our two fridges, one freezer, and Starlink. 

Regarding fresh water, we have two 75 gallon water tanks and 40 gallons in jugs.  We use our watermaker to make fresh drinking water out of ocean water (reverse osmosis), which uses the generator.  We use 1 gallon of diesel to make 120 gallons of water.  We test our water (currently 390 ppm/parts per million).  Out here, the ocean water is so pure that our filters are quite clean, as compared to the more inland waters around Mexico.  We’ve been drinking so much ocean and eating so much wahoo and tuna, that we are turning into the ocean!

We spent time today putting diesel and water from our jugs into the boat itself. 

We also enjoyed the bit of calm to take some drone pics and Emil took a quick dip in 14,000 feet of water. 

Dinner was fresh-baked herb bread with zucchini spaghetti and a small glass of white wine.  Looking ahead, today looks like our last day of calm with winds filling in tomorrow.

Overnight, the first two watch shifts were mellow and Chris’ watch got a bit more spicy dodging squalls, but nothing like the night prior.  Our watch schedule:  9pm-1am Cora and Jen, 1am-5am Calder and Emil, 5-9am Chris.  During the day, we take turns at the helm and taking naps, cooking, and cleaning.  It’s been working out overall quite well.  Chris is “on-call” all the time, so some nights are a bit tough on him, but we try to get him long naps during the following days.

Less than 500 miles to go! Carin, Freya, and Arielle from Petersburg are getting on their flight today to meet us in the islands.

Total miles over the last 24 hours:   107 nm

Average speed in last 24 hours:      4.5 nm

Total miles of trip so far:    2,354 nm (less than 500 miles to go!)