NZ to Tahiti - Week 3

Monday, September 2
20 42.3S
154 13.5W

A short post as there is no drama to report this week! Nothing broke (that wasn't already broken) and the weather wasn't savage. It's been good, we sailed 759 miles, 681 made good. We're only 325 miles out of Papeete, Tahiti now and hope to be in port within the next three days or so. Looking forward to some fresh veggies, baguettes and French pastries. There is a Carrefour supermarche in Papeete. If it's anything like the one we visited while sailing in Indonesia, we'll be very happy.

The week was a bit of a mixed bag weather-wise. There was a day of squally rain and grey skies, We also lost quite a few hours when there was no wind at all. We had some extraordinary stretches of good sailing, a couple of days where we never touched the sails, or, heading and just peeled off the miles directly towards our destination over a flat sea in a fairly level boat. Sailing as it should be!

It's also warmer and we've been able to open up the boat. Water temperature is 28.5C, cabin temperature about 22C. Even the evenings are warm enough to sit in the cockpit and admire the quintessential black velvet skies sprinkled with clouds of milky-white galaxies. One big disappointment is that we have seen very little wildlife: no whales, no dolphins, very few birds and only two measly flying fish dead on deck one morning. It is supposed to be whale season in these waters, maybe as we get closer to land where the whale nurseries are we might encounter some, it's always an awesome experience to see them, even just at a distance.

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