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Nexus - Seamounts below and Suwarrow ahead



We crossed over Seamount Marara yesterday, which gives you a strange sensation of flying while sailing. Marara is just past Motu One and rises from 16,000ft to 3,800ft as rough cone shaped mountain about seven miles in diameter. It would be an awesome sight on land, but completely invisible in the water. We like to avoid sailing over them. I read a NASA study where they used a low earth orbit radar to study to ocean surface a few years back, and concluded two things; first that rogue waves are much more common than previously thought, and second that they most frequently occur in the vicinity of seamounts or cliffs. We had a great night sailing last night and this morning, with the wind above 20kts, we were clocking along around 9-14kts. We're closing on Suwarrow too soon now, which is a great problem to have. We tried to furl the gennaker in 20kts of wind this morning and, once again, the furling luff line parted and had us chasing balls around the deck again and we had to blow the tack line and retrieve the gennaker from the sheet end and stuff the mess into a locker. This time it parted at the top....12mm spectra...I'm not liking this profurl spinex system at the moment!

All is well, the white sails are out and we are loafing along at 6kts, trying to time a Thursday am arrival into the reefs of Suwarrow!

Russ and Laurie on NEXUS 11:40 5/14 at 13 34S; 160 58W



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