500 miles down

TIME: 2021/05/24 02:59
LATITUDE: 08-02.44S
LONGITUDE: 150-30.77W
COURSE: 348T
SPEED: 4.0

The scenery does not change much out here, except yesterday when we passed an atoll by a couple of miles. So crazy to see nothing but ocean and sky for days then suddenly there are palm trees just above the waves. We believe Kariorina is an uninhabited island, part of the Line Island chain, we opted not to stop and explore.

We are just carrying along, not much to report. The weather has been cooperating for the most part, sailing along beautifully with lumpy seas. No thunderstorms materialized so that was a positive. Yesterday and today the waves are a little less organized. We are anticipating a building of wave height as a result of a storm in the Southern Ocean. As one of my friends in NZ reported they saw upwards of 10 meter waves, thankfully they are well protected in harbour. Well I guess those ocean swells are working their way north thousands of miles to come greet us, but gratefully will be much reduced by the time they reach us.

I could give a recap of stuff that has broken on the boat, that is always a fun update. We have had an ongoing saga with our port side water tank. It first started leaking back in 2019. D managed to plastic weld it successfully and that repair lasted for a year. However, since then the repair has not held and D has pulled out the nearly 400L tank to repair it again and again. In fact the last time he repaired it was two days before we left. I had suggested, forget it, we still have another nearly 400L tank and a smaller 250L one. Plus a functioning watermaker. But no, D could not let the tank win. He pulled off all the previous repairs and basically started over. The good news, the repair is still holding!!! The bad news...we discovered this morning that our starboard water tank is empty!!! There is no way we have gone through 400L of water in four days. We had noticed a similar crack at the bottom of the starboard tank but chose not to fix it as it was not showing signs of leaking and it is not as easy to remove as the 250L tank would have be removed first to get the larger tank out. Well needless to say, I am very grateful that D persisted in trying to repair the port side tank. Here is hoping the repair continues to hold. We have changed our water usage by using a bucket of salt water to rinse all dishes prior to a quick fresh water wash. We are already very light water users, no showers or laundry, just for drinking, cooking and dishes. So I don't anticipate this being an issue for us. I figure we aren't truly sailing if stuff is not breaking.

Thank you so much for all of your emails filled with news!! Always exciting to hear what people are up to while our days are on the mundane side. Around midnight we hit the 500 miles traveled mark. Before we left, the girls put together goodie bags of treats to celebrate each 500 miles sailed so this morning they got to break into the first bag. Here is hoping we continue to progress at a similar pace to the next 500 miles. Maple and her crew are all happy and doing well. Definitely have our sea legs now. Iris has started her watches now too and Ella has started to knit a shawl since she finished up her blanket just before we left Tahiti.

If I don't send out a group email, you can always check here https://followingsea.net/blog/Maple to see our track. Assuming we can get the radio to connect, we will always send a daily update to this site so the map can be updated to show our progress for anyone who may be interested.