Our passage ended up being 1061 miles, 6 days 6.5 hours. We averaged 7.0 kph, 13.8 knots max, agv 169 mile days with our best day being 206 miles on the fourth day out. We had rain squalls every single day. The first day we fought the confused Kauai Channel seas, the second day we were beating, having to hand steer as the wind angles kept shifting with the squalls. Third day we were still beating but waves were smoothing out. Fourth day winds picked up and we headed straight for Palmyra and made the 206 max. Fifth day back to only 151 miles with mixed seas and current against us. Last day we put up the full main to rage the last 70 miles to make Palmyra by 4pm.

We used the 3 ‘n 3 package – our #3 jib and 3 reefs in the main. We’ve found this manages most winds we find, between 15-30 knots over the deck. Nothing major broke and we kept the saltwater outside the boat! We still don’t have cabinets for our folded clothes and we tried a new hanging system but found we need nets over them to keep them from being flung all over the v berth when they start to swing around.

Scott hooked up the new reef point on the jib and when we were ready to go back to a full jib, we couldn’t raise it back up. It was calm enough that Scott decided to go up the headstay and try to fix it but he admitted that he’ll never try that again without a secondary line to the main. He kept doing 360’s and couldn’t stop himself so I brought him down as soon as possible. We tried once more to raise the jib and it did go all the way up so his swinging did something!

The Nature Conservatory had a boat doing research outside the island so they spotted us 10 miles out and hailed us at 6 miles off. We were told that they were going to turn away any other boat because we were the only ones who had done their homework, got the $350 no-rat certification and filled out all forms correctly. It was fun to hear they could tell we were ‘hauling’. We were going about 9 knots.

We are now on day 6 of the 7 they allow for a visit. We’ve had rain every day but squeezed in one snorkel and two hikes around the island. Loved seeing sea turtles, manta rays, huge spiders, TWO coconut crabs out during the day(normally they only come out at night but it was so cloudy and dark, they probably thought that was good enough). Be sure to check out the pictures!
While it rained relentlessly, we got out and cleaned all decks and our cockpit. We then plugged up the hole that allows our steering wheel to drain and proceeded to catch rainwater right into our deck fitting, into every tub/bin we owned and into the wheel well. When we checked in, the rain hadn’t started so I asked if we could get water from them. Now there was no reason to haul water, we had more than enough on board.

We loved hearing their story of how they eradicated the 30,000 rats. Look up http://www.belllabs.com/news_articles/69 for a great overview. Email us if you want more info. The administrator, Amanda Meyer at Amanda_Meyer@fws.gov gave us the blow-by-blow which was fun. She asked me to write up our connection with Palmyra and the murder story, ‘And the Sea will Tell’ so that was fun to do also.

Palmyra is beautiful, and it was exciting to make the landfall. With the researchers here, there's people to talk to but we have lots of time to ourselves and of course, the yacht club has all the recordings of past visitors.

As I type this, we are listening to the radio as a rescue takes place right off Palmyra. A skipper of a 65 foot schooner had a fall and possibly insulin shock and Palmyra sent a powerboat out to collect him. The Coast Guard is flying down and will most likely take him back to Hawaii. Too bad it had to start at 5:45am with a loud alarm sounding. We were sure it was a tsunami warning bell. It's now after 10am and the skipper is still being transported in. Palmyra said they had the Coast Guard communicating on Skype to get all the vitals, etc. I'll try to finish the story in our next blog.