Day 2 at sea — After a miserable 45 hours, conditions began to ease some. Not a lot, but some. The waves dropped to 4 to 8 feet. The frequency and forcefulness of the nasty beam rolls lessened a little. The ride went from being super miserable to uncomfortable. Most of our days at sea have been uncomfortable, so we have learned to live with uncomfortable.

One of the things about Niue is  that it is difficult to anchor. The coast is a deep and the ground is mostly rock. There are 16 mooring balls. If we arrive and there are no mooring balls available, then we will probably go on to our next destination. After Niue it will be another full two days to Tonga. So if we are lucky, we only have 1.5 day left to go, and if we are unlucky, it will be 3 more days to Tonga. We know of a lot of yachts planning to stop in Niue about the same time we do, so we are nervous about getting a spot.

Day 3 at sea — As predicted, the weather slowly improved throughout the day. By mid-afternoon, the wind was down to 12 knots. The seas actually got bigger at 6 to 10 feet, however, the waves were spaced widely apart and thus didn’t beat us up as bad. The nasty beam waves were much less frequent and forceful. It actually isn’t too bad of a ride right now. Our trip from Fatu Hiva to Manihi was 3 days of misery. Our trip from Suwarrow to Niue was 2 days of super misery, one day of uncomfortable, and one day of not too bad. We are debating which passage was worse.

We are back to the usual passage activities. Today we watched “The Descent”. Neither of us had ever heard of it. Turns out that it is about people who go caving and get eaten by monsters. We can’t believe that out of all the days we could have happened across this movie while we are at sea, we happen to see it the day before arriving in a place famous for its caves.

We hope that the improved weather means that a bunch of boats will have left from Niue this afternoon, opening up mooring spots for us. And for those wondering why we didn’t wait to leave Suwarrow, the forecast gets worse tomorrow and the next day, so even if we had waited to leave, it still would have only been one nice day and 2 ½ rough days. On that note, we have figured out why it takes most people five or six or ten years to get around the world even though they are taking a similar route to us. They wait for ideal weather conditions, which are rare. Unfortunately, we have a limited time line and we can’t wait for ideal. We have to go in good enough.

Here are a few more answers to blog questions:

Q: Which of you writes the blogs?
A: Eric does most of the writing about Kosmos and boating. Christi edits it to make it easily understandable for people that know nothing about boats, like her. Christi does most of the writing about our adventures. When she is done, Eric edits and adds any additional comments, observations and opinions from his perspective. When Shelley and Pete were here, they also added their own comments into the postings, as well.

Q: What movie did you watch with Padagonia?
A: Triplets of Bellevue. We recommend it.

Q: Have you considered that when the air conditioner cycles the power surge may be tripping it off due to a high AC spike? Does it work when you have less load from other appliances?
A: We have watched the power consumption carefully. We suspect the problem is that there is not enough sea water coming through the intakes to keep the air conditioner cool. With the hull coming out of the water, the water flow starts and stops. This is only an issue in big beam seas.

Q: Isn’t an 8 KW generator too small to power a dive compressor?
A: It is possible to run a small compressor from 8kw. The motor start up is what costs a lot of amps, so you want to keep the generator load down when turning on the compressor. The inverter can also kick in extra amps from the batteries to help start up things. Ultimately, you need to look at the stats on the motor. There should be a letter on the motor to indicate start up costs vs. run time load.

Q: Why is Christi always scrubbing the grass?
A: She has chosen bottom maintenance over doing maintenance on the 5 engines (main, generator, wing, outboard 1, outboard 2)

Q: Were the crepes expensive?
A: They were the same price as a sandwich, though in some places they were a lot smaller than a sandwich. In some places they were hearty like a sandwich. Figure about $12. French Polynesia food is very good, but not “fast food” priced.