We finally took the step of consulting with a weather router(gives us the best info possible as the "best" time to go). His answer--no time soon unless we want to motor most of the way. There is just not enough wind out there to allow us to sail there. We'd have to motor a minimum of 150 miles(one+day) or as much as 450 miles! Yuck!! That's not what we want to do so here we continue to sit and wait. The earliest date he thinks we might be able to leave is 26th or 27th and that's a maybe at best. There is a big front that is headed south of Tonga and it might give us some winds but it's too early to know. With all these delays, we will probably pass on visiting Tarawa and maybe only spend a day or so at Tuvalu instead of a week. We will be quite a bit behind the schedule we set for ourselves. We need to be out of this area as cyclones are known to hit up here and that's one of the last things we want to experience.
So each day, we start out by cranking on the generator for a couple of hours to recharge the batteries and then take off for errands and Carls Jr for lunch. Use their internet as much as we can and then return to Zephyr about 1700 and settle in for the night watching recorded tv shows and movies.
The best thing that happened about our delay was that the parts we had been waiting for from DuoGen(in GB) was that they finally arrived this morning. According to the tracking the USPS does, it's been sitting(and still is) in San Francisco since November 4th. Guess you can't put much stock in what the USPS says as to where your packages are(gee what a surprise).
So, as I said, here we sit and here we wait. A few more projects will get done between all the rain we get every day. It normally starts about 0300 with showers, then off and on through the morning and then quits till about 1600 and starts up again. And please keep in mind, it's not the "rainy" season yet.
Stay tuned. We'll let you know what's to come. We'll be spending Thanksgiving right here.