Current conditions: Wind/weather - currently N 12 knots, Mostly sunny, 82 F Sea state - gentle NW swell, 3 to 4 ft, 10 sec. Boat speed/course - 5.5 knots under full suit of sails. Course: 225 degrees

Well day six slipped by without a blog posting. Our goal is to write every day, but don't worry if we sometimes miss a day. Things could happen that may limit or end our blog writing, like the fairly good chance that our old laptop computer will crash and there will be no more postings until we get to the Marqueses. But so far, so good. Today, day 7, is a great day to go sailing. The water is crystal clear with a deep turquoise tint. The wind and sea are gentle except for a long low swell rolling along. Three dolphins came by the boat this morning to see us for a few minutes. But except from them and two fishing vessels, we have the ocean to ourselves.

For those of you that may be wondering if the failure of our Autohelm autopilot means that we have to hand-steer all the time, there is no reason to worry. We only use the Autohelm when we are motoring. On this trip we will hopefully only motor for 2 or 3 days total. Not having the autopilot on those few days will only be a small inconvenience. We tried to order a spare drive belt from the US, while in Mexico, but the ST4000 model is 20 years old and no spare parts are available; (that we know of...if you know where to find a 987 Synchroflex AT5/750 drive belt...then we should talk).

For the day in day out steering job, no one does it better than Wanda, our Aries wind vane. Sitting in the cockpit at night watching Wanda doing her job of keeping us on course is incredible. In the dim light of the binnacle compass, it looks like a ghost is sailing the boat. The invisible helmsman makes a little turn to starboard, then a little turn to port and holds her there for a few seconds and straighten her out. Radiance and Wanda work in perfect union with each other. Radiance will catch a gust of wind and go "oh I am going to go with this one". Wanda responds by saying "sure, go ahead, but just for a little while, then we have to get back on course". Radiance bares off and picks up a little speed, then Wanda pulls her back on course with a little tug on the helm. They play this game 24-hours a day, every day, except when the wind is so light that Wanda gets bored and goes to sleep. Then Radiance is on her own. She does a good job of staying more or less on course on those light wind stretches, especially if we rig our drifter (light wind head sail) on the forestay to pull her along by the nose.

On a boat that sails the open ocean 24/7 for 30 days, there will most likely be a few things to repair along the way. For those of you who may find this interesting, we will have a 'fixed today' heading in our blog postings.

Fixed today: (day 1-7) -SSB did not broadcast with full power. Resoldered tuner/antenna connection. This appear to have fixed the issue. -Water maker water tank always seemed to empty too quickly, even though we run the water maker everyday. Patched a few holes on the pick-up tube in the tank with self-sealing silicone tape. This is a temporary fix, something needs to be reconfigured in this tank to make it perfect. Who knows there may be more to this issue. Water from the tank tastes awful and the tank needs to be coated with Nova-pure. So, for now, all drinking water from the water maker is going in gallon jugs in the ice box. It's nice to have it cold anyway. (Since our water-maker is working well, we have not touched the water supply in our 100 gallon main tank, and like to think of that large quantity as 'back-up').

More next time.