Hi All,
LAND HO, LAND HO, LAND HO!!!!!
My favorite words on passage besides FISH ON:)))))
We sighted the island of Aneityum yesterday around noon. In a normal year w/o TC Pam damage, we would have most likely checked in there and worked our way north. Due to carrying relief supplies for Butterfly Trust we are skipping the southern islands and going straight to the central islands to offload the supplies in Port Vila.
Another quiet day…..just what we want on passage….boring!!!!
CORRECTION: In a blog a few days ago I said we had crossed the 5000 engine hours and 35,000 engine hours….oops, meant 35,000 nautical miles!!!
And, we did crossover the 35,000 nm mark yesterday!!!!
Yesterday we were surprised when the winds built to 15-20 kts ESE in the am. I looked on the nadi fleet code map and saw there was a NW/SE running trough between New Caledonia and Vanuatu. Maybe the higher winds were from the trough??? The higher winds lasted about 8 hours from 21 5S to 20 5S.
After that the winds backed to 8-12 kts ENE as forecasted. Later in the evening the winds clocked to ESE and calmed to 5-10 kts.
Stats: May 14 1900 UTC (7:00am May 15 NZ time):
Position: 18 24S 168 26E
Traveled: 185nm today; 1107 nm total; 41nm to go; ETA to Port Vila is Friday ~Noon
Course: 330M COG
Wind: 8-12 kts SE
Waves: 0.5m wind chop SE; no discernible swell!!
Speed: current speed is 8.0 kts SOG; has varied 7.1-8.2 kts today; avg is 7.8 kts for passage; slowed to 1625 RPM for fuel conservation
Weather: 70% cloud cover this am; sea temp 80.7 deg F; air temp 78 deg F
Boat sightings: 1 today; 11 total
Fishing: Zero, nada, zilch….whaaaaa….leftovers for dinner for me and popcorn for Kathy:(((
Sail: down
Fuel burn: 1.34 nmpg yesterday, 1.22nmpg total; much better fuel burn at the lower rpm….we have plenty of fuel leftover!!!!
Hope all is well!
John
Mystic Moon
GO MYSTIC GO!!!
