After all the time I've spent on the water it still amazes me how quickly things change out here. It isn't just that the ocean feels different today than it did yesterday, it actually seems like a different place. It's a perfect beach day - light winds, lots of sunshine, calm seas - and I'm reminded of late summer in Rhode Island. Unfortunately, not great sailing weather.

We've been motoring since 9pm last night and it's been slow going as we're trying to conserve fuel. But the sun has started to set, stirring up a bit of breeze, so we're enjoying a short period of quiet trying to capture as much free propulsion as possible. We're speeding along at 3.7 knots... We've been lucky not to have southeasterly trade winds this whole trip, but we'd be grateful for them now so we could set a direct course for Raivavae. Instead, we're still heading east so that when the east/northeast wind does pick up we can turn the boat north and have a reasonable wind angle for the sail up. The only part of the forecast that's changed is the wind strength. It's going to be weaker, which means we'll be doing more motoring - or drifting - than we thought.

At 22-May-16 3:27 AM (utc) our position was 28°58.03'S 153°45.16'W