Day 8

We're making excellent progress towards the Marquesas with about 1700Nm
to go. In our reverse history of the world we whipped through the
19th century, playing Tchaikovsky at 1812Nm to go. The French
revolution happened in reverse as I slept and we're approaching the
South Sea Bubble.

The sailing is more of a reach than downwind, which
actually means that we can sail consistently faster for the same
windspeed compared to, say, crossing the Atlantic. We did use the
'stingray', our double-headed code 0 sail, yesterday and allowed
ourselves to sail more downwind. It felt very easy, but once we took
both sails over to one side and hoisted the main, we added an extra
knot and headed in the right direction. We're very un-brave at night -
with 18-20 knots of wind we have the genoa and 1st reefed main. It's
probably 1/2 to 1 knot slower than full main and the code 0
(single-sided stingray) but I sleep better! A masthead light that has caught up several miles on our port quarter
overnight. We think it's our friends on Cassiopee - a hylas 46 - but
they are not appearing on AIS so we can't be sure.

This evening has been wonderful sailing under clear skies in contrast
to rain and little wind last night. Obviously, the skies are very
different here, no pole star and thousands of new (to me) stars in the
south.