The last two nights have been the most challenging of the whole journey to date. We have been negotiating the maze of Tuamotu atolls on the way to Papeete in Tahiti.. Ideally you would do this with moderate winds, in daylight or a full moon, fine conditions and clear visibility. Instead we we negotiated the tight bits at night, no moon, squalls with 10 to 30 knots of wind, torrential rain, visibility zero. Fortunately I had confidence in the electronic charts which said the area had been surveyed by the French last year. We had backup navigation running on the laptop and this always agreed with the chartplotter.

It was with relief that we finally exited this area early this morning and we are now on the final strait to Papeete, just 140nm to go and one more night. We have 15 to 20 kn winds now from behind so we are scooting along with a reef in the main and the jib poled out.

What we cant believe is that we have seen no sign of human life for weeks. We thought we would see aircraft, ships or yachts the closer we got to Tahiti, but nothing. Has everyone gone to ground? Is Donald threatening to flick the switch?

Bern