Get ready, get set

I was up early to go to the market at the top of the hill this morning, where local farmers set up stall and start selling from 6am.

We have vacuum packed some meat for the fridge and filled the net hammocks above the spare bunk with papayas, mangoes, pineapples and melons. The veg gets relegated to the bilges where it seemed to keep pretty well when we crossed the Atlantic.

Meanwhile Rob has scuba dived to change the anode on the propeller and Steve is fixing a leak under the sink. All of us happy with our own tasks!

Studying the wind and current predictions we think we will take the rhumbline route to the Marquesas (ie the direct line) rather than heading south first. There is a steady high pressure system to the south of us which will provide south easterly winds for us once we reach it, hopefully by Saturday night. It's due to give us 10-20 knots of wind. Nice!

(In the Southern Hemisphere the rotation of high and low pressure systems is the reverse to the Northern hemisphere, so a high pressure system has wind rotating around it anti-clockwise).

The south equatorial current may give us up to 1.5 knots in a westerly direction, a huge benefit to us.