Day Two at sea saw continued beautiful conditions. We had 10-16 knots of wind from the SE and less than a half a meter of swell. Part way through the night, the wind died down. Both Matthew and I on our respective night shifts tried to eke out as many miles as we could, but we were traveling a pathetic 1.5-2 knots/hour at times and didn't make great headway in those eight hours. Around about 5:30am local time this morning, we gave up and fired up the engine and have been motoring in 1-3 knots of wind since then.

We're proud of the fact that we've used less than 40 gallons of fuel since leaving Mexico and used fewer than 10 gallons between French Polynesia and Tonga. We've been lucky with the weather, but filled all our jerry cans to capacity in anticipation that we might have slow winds for a few days and might want to motor to keep moving on this leg of the journey. Today the seas have been as flat as we've ever seen them offshore, which has been a pleasant side effect of having no wind. It was so calm, in fact, that I baked a chocolate cake from scratch on my off-shift today! Rarely is it calm enough that I can attempt the gymnastics of moving things around, reading a recipe, etc., etc. while on passage. Just to make a cup of tea sometimes feels like an amazing feat when we're on passage. First, you find a place to wedge the cup, always maintaining a triple threat position yourself, so that if the boat pitches in an unexpected direction, you won't fall over. Then you heat water in the tea kettle, which is held in place by stainless steel arms on top of the stove. Then you have to get out the tea packet you want, sugar, and make milk from powder, all whilst being careful not to set anything down or leave it for even a moment, as it only takes one lurch to send it all flying! We keep to pretty simple meals, generally, but it's been nice to eat better on this passage, so far.

It amazes me how small the range of perfect winds for sailing really is. Below ten knots, it feels like we're constantly babying the sails to keep them full and moving us in the right direction. We don't want to let the sails flog as that wears on the rigging, so we often sit with a hand on the sheet, prepared to pull back and take some of the tension off as the sail collapses and refills in light winds. 10-25 knots of wind is pretty comfortable. We can have full sail up in 10 knots or reef down to a comfortably small suit of sails in 25 to keep us moving the right way with little or no attention. Once the wind gets to 25 and higher, though, we watch carefully to be sure it doesn't jump higher and prepare ourselves for what changes we might need to make if the wind continues to climb. We're hoping for (and forecast to get) a lot more 10-16 knot days!