Happy Easter!! We're in the SE tradewinds and the sailing continues to be fantastic. We're having a blast and everone on board is happy. well-rested and well-fed. The wind is a steady 15 Knt. from the southeast, we're traveling about 6.5 Knt on a very mild and comfortable beat, and only two degrees from the equator - should reach it sometime early on Monday. The dreaded ITCZ turned out to be no big deal - lots of squalls with little or no extra wind. It was a relief to get rinsed off and for Chinook to get a bath. David and Bruno, the dynamic duo in the galley, fixed a delicious pancake and bacon breakfast (David starts having withdrawel symptoms when deprived of his bacon). Preparing for our first squall, we discovered the furling mechanism for the jib was broken - pulled the entire sail into the forward head and David fixed the furler - fortunately it was only a set screw which had come out. Next morning got the jib up and out and the furler tested. The doldrums also turned out to be overrated - probably a result of La Nina. We had one hole where we motored for around 1 hour to get out of the ITCZ ASAP and, other than that, we've been able to sail. So far, we've only needed to motor 8-9 hours in 13 days - not bad!

Happy Easter to all, especially Muffy, Whitney, Tyler, Al and Shirley and the rest of our family.

Joyeuses Paques a tout le monde Nous voila donc plus tot que prevu dans les alizes du Sud Est, que nous avons attrape seulement apres 2H de moteur et quelques petits grains..Nous avons maintenant le cap sur Fatu Hiva, la plus au Sud des Marquises. Si le vent ne tourne pas trop au Sud nous devrions pouvoir conserver ce cap pendant une petite semaine..Comme vous pouvez le lire ci dessus nous ne manquons de rien question nourriture ! et nous avons decide de manger directement les oeufs de Paques plutot que de les cacher dans le cockpit. Nous profitons de nos belles journees mais ne nous vous oublions pas ;-))

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