Rapturous!

I woke this morning to the joyful shout," Land Ho!" Just off our port bow was a hazy, grey lump that could only be.....yes, a Polynesian Island. The GPS confirmed that, in the right place, those tiny dots in the immense ocean had zoomed out into an orange and turquoise blob called Ua Hiva We're not quite there yet, but it's impossible not to say, we've done it! 3000 miles in 22 days 8 hours.

The last two days have been spectacularly uneventful. There has been very little wind and we have motored almost all of two day. Over the 3000 miles of this voyage, we have used very little fuel, mostly to charge the batteries. Now we will take advantage of our extra fuel. We need to get into the anchorage on Thursday (today) because we have to assemble Velocirapture so we can get onto the island to check in with the gendarmes. The gendarme only work until 11:30 on Friday and they're off on the weekend, so if we miss seeing them we will be quarantined on the boat the whole weekend. Urgh... no. No can do. We'll put up with the noise and the diesel exhaust for as long as it takes for us to get to Nuka Hiva on time. There is one more issue. We're not sure what time it is in the Marquesas. I think our boat time is about 2 hours behind given that the sun rose at about 8:30 this morning.

For the first time, we have been bored and trying to find work. Greg cleared the blocked vent on the main fresh water tank yesterday. It involved empying lockers and disassembling cabinetry to get to the pipes but he knew what he was doing and he had everything fixed and put back in place within 2 hours. Go Skipper!

I started the process of digging out the extended canned rations and transferring the leftovers from the day bags to the wine carrier bags where they are organized by type. We still have frozen flank steak and frozen mixed veg, lots of canned tuna, canned pineapple and tasteless canned vegetables, cheese, grains and beans. We even have beer and wine left over. Nice!

Diane mentioned that she was thinking about doing laundry, just to have something to do. Instead, she and I spent the time practicing knots. We've figured out how to tie a bowline with one hand with the line under pressure, as if we needed to tie a rope around ourselves after falling overboard (scary thought). I say, 'we figured it out,' because it's not easy and it requires strong hands. Just throw me a life ring, please.

Roxy broke her writer's block and wrote an article for a food writer's blog about her experiences in Oaxaca. Since we were running the engine, recharging her laptop was not an impediment. It was funny to see her in her professional guise with glasses perched on her nose.

Getting close, now. We've just turned off the engine and we're sailing on a beam reach with the staysail at about 5 knots. No noise, no smell. Soon we'll be able to smell the soil and vegetation of the islands.