We're almost there.
31 May 2014 | Galapagos to Marquesas, French Polynesia
Steve
We are almost there. Gaya thinks she smells land. I just smell her cooking, which is quite pleasing. We are about 120 miles from Hiva Oa and should hopefully make landfall there tomorrow. It's been a long passage, probably the longest we will ever do. It's been a good passage, all things considered. The breakage we had could have been prevented we now know. I believe the spinnaker failure was probably due to the block getting superheated during the lightning strike. The block looked fine, but the sheave inside disintegrated under heavy load. Should have just replaced it since it was near the strike point. The main we don't know for sure yet, but it is replacement time. We intended to replace either in Tahiti or New Zealand, but now with the long stay visa in FP, it probably needs to be done in Tahiti for sure.
In spite of it all. Everyone enjoyed the passage. We made great time. We would have made a record time if we hadn't had the breakdown, but we still bettered our initial estimate of time even with the problems.
Hope to be talking to all of you soon from a real phone and real internet....Oh yeah, we just got an email that internet in all of FP is down for 4 days. The underwater cable from FP to Hawaii is damaged and they are trying to repair. So we may be on the boat email a little while longer.