We have meet lots of wonderful cruisers who are going where we are so we will have a nice group to travel with. There are several American boats in the fleet but most are French or Brits with one Canadian. We all enjoyed a potluck dinner on the beach and shared our weather information about where the wind might be and when was the best time to go. I have to share that when we lived ashore I never bother one bit about the weather. It could rain or snow it hardly mattered other than shoveling was going to be necessary or maybe the sprinkler system should be shut off for several days. Now we depend on the weather for lots of things including our well being.

The trip to the Marquises will be three thousand miles and depending on the wind it can take up to thirty days. With a good breeze we might do 150 miles or better in 24 hours or with little or no wind 25 miles in 24 hours. I am wondering what I am going to do with my time for MAYBE 30 days on a boat. We are planning to update the blog while we are underway using the SSB radio. Of course that all depends on what the propagation is on a given day and time and that will be another subject to follow.

We will do very little motoring as we don’t have enough fuel and we need to conserve as much as possible because we run the generator for electricity and our main engine for water. We are a small municipality but diesel is required to make it all happen. The game plan is to sail as much as possible as we are a sailboat.

We have stocked up on tons of food and fishing is always available. The trick is to catch the fish; drag the fish until little life is left and then bleed the fish out before bring said fish on board the boat. But remember other bigger fish are looking for an easy meal as well…. did I hear the work shark! I don’t think we will starve on our trip and maybe we can even promote this adventure as a weight loss exercise. Some cruisers say they do lose weight on passages because of the boat motion. We will see about that.

We will continue to watch the weather, work on getting our zarpe for our next port (which is a requirement to check in to the new country). I hope to do some basic cooking to have ready for the first several days at sea so that being in the galley is a bit easier while we are working on getting our sea legs under us.

Hopefully we can leave this coming Monday April 20 as the wind looks pretty good and the boat is ready to go. Ron will go up the mast to inspect the rigging before we leave but we don’t expect any surprises.


The Crew on Always Saturday