June 18, 2012
You want to drive from San Diego to San Francisco to visit your Aunt Mavis. You really want to go tomorrow but you can’t because the wind isn’t blowing. Let me explain.
Your car only goes five miles an hour that’s 120 miles a day if you drive 24 hours a day for around five days. You probably have enough gas to get there, but you a pretty sure there are no gas stations in San Francisco so once you leave San Francisco, you’ll have to drive to Portland to get gas.
Because of this, you need the wind to blow from behind or thereabouts so you can turn off the engine most of the way and coast with the wind. If it doesn’t blow, you might make it with your engine, but then you’ll be stuck there for a long, long time and how much sourdough bread can you eat?
We wanted to leave for the Tuamotus today. Our equivalent of Fritz Coleman told us the wind should be good for the next five days but he lied –they all lie. There were rain squalls today and no wind.
We had a little same-bay-too-long fever so we motored about 10 miles to the west side of Ua Pou to a bay called Hakamaii. We’re now anchored in our first uninhabited bay and we’re the only boat here. It’s really pretty and we’re 10 miles closer to the Tuomotus (only 415 miles to go)! We’ll try again tomorrow if the wind comes up, if not, we’ll be forced to sit around for another day, read and eat. Darn! -Rich
