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Nexus - Wind lacking...bring up Fat Albert!



We had another great night with relatively strong winds in the 20-25kt range, giving us the power to surf again and reel off the miles. However, in the early morning the wind died down to 15kts, which is pretty much what was forecast, and as it is dead aft, we are in a warm downwind slog for the last couple of days to go. Since we like 8kts a lot better than 6kts, we put away our well worn 80% gennaker and pulled up our 100% gennaker(aka Fat Albert) for the first time! Its a beautiful teal blue and white asymmetric spinnaker, but lighter weight than our 80%, so not tolerant of strong winds at all, but it moves us right along in light ones. As it's not been furled around it's ProFurl Spinnex yet, we had to wool it and pull it up without a sock, which worked like a charm. I love that trick! We're currently cycling between 7.5kts and 8.5kts as the wind rises and falls slightly, making good progress as we estimate late Monday arrival at this point, or Monday am if the wind picks up again!

We've been disappointed with our fishing all day yesterday as we didn't even get a nibble, and we were envious of Alpharatz landing a 100lb Marlin as reported on the radio net. However, this quickly shifted to disappointment with our lack of attention to fishing as we reeled in the line last evening only to discover the lure had freed itself and we were trolling a bare wire leader! Rounding out our typical selection of cruising "chocolates", our port power winch has decided to throw its circuit breaker from a newly persistent low current draw, so we're back to grinding until we get to Marquesas, and...yes, the port antenna is now wobbling, but this one is VHF so it has the weight of a thick wire keeping it balanced up there for time being, so we're going to ride it out rather than risk life and limb. It's amazing the things 7600 miles will shake loose, but as they say, cruising is working on your boat in exotic locations!

Russ and Laurie on NEXUS at 16:00 9 49.'S;132 32.'W


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