Bye Bye Marqueses!

Day One

Feels like I have experienced a variety of items such as cultural events, ancient art, jungle treks, spectacular waterfalls and fantastic trade-winds sailing.

We motored out at 06.30 for about 30 min to top up batteries and get into the beautiful trade-winds that were being blocked by landmass. At 07.00 we were sailing on a close reach sail-point with small reef in the main sail and also in the Genoa sail. We’re moving at 7-7.5 knots and heeling at 15%. I’m a happy sailor! Seastate is decent, swell is building, which we’re powering through nicely, as we’re moving further out to sea.

We seem to be having two sailboats as company, Nimue and Calypso, both longer (waterline) boats so they will most likely leave Sarantium in the dust! But for now we are keeping up at almost 8 knots… 😃 in 20 knots of warm trade-winds! Did I mention that I love my choice to buy a sailboat and Sailaway😉???

Wind seems to be a bit up and down the further along we sail. From the chats with other sailors this is typical. I have set the hydro vane for a close-reach sail and the it is keeping that sail-point nicely. Consequently, Sarantium is varying the heading of 180 degrees to 220 degrees and keeping up with variation of wind strength and wind angle.

After a couple of hours, the wind settled and kept its speed around 15 knots… ❤️⛵️…And this is how Day One of this passage continued in the South Pacific! What an amazing day!