[password]minerva
[position]11°10.75'S 173°30.30'W
[status] On the rhumb line to Majuro, RMI. Departed Pago Pago on Thursday under sunny skies and light trade wind conditions but it was not to last as a new surface trough formed over us and our forecast of 12-15k wind turned in to 4-7k. So the first day we had a mixed bag of some pretty nice sailing in mostly light air, a few hours under half oz. spinnaker, and a half hour of motoring. After sunset the wind filled to 10-16k, mostly 10-12k, with squalls and lots of lightening.

Friday brought glorious sailing as the skies cleared, the wind went forward in the 10-16k range, mostly 12-14k. We were seeing boat speeds in the 8's to low 9's but fighting an adverse current of about 1.5k. The clouds built around sunset and the wind dropped but we sailed peacefully all night making SOG's in the 4k range in 6-7k of wind.

We were forced to turn on the engine at 5AM this morning when the wind went more aft and under 5 knots. The trough has expanded in size so we are seeing plenty of squalls, but not much wind in them - just lots of rainbows, and oddly a bit of hail on 2 occasions!
[speed] 5.1
[heading] 321T
[weather] Wind 3-5k 105T. Seas 1.5m. 90% cloud, showers, a bit of hail, and lots of rainbows. Bar 1015.
12/1/2018 7:03 PM UTC
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