November 25

This morning finds us still motorsailing in light winds of 7-9k from the SSE. What little wind there is comes from almost directly behind us rendering our sails useless. The skies all night were mostly clear with many squalls on the radar, none of which actually touched us or gave us any rain. This morning skies are basically the same though the number and size of the squalls is already reduced. We are making between 4.5 and 5k over ground and the swells are from the NE still. We have a fairly decent East setting current (the North Equatorial Counter Current which is known to flow East in these latitudes) so we are steering about 15degrees West of our rhumb line which is 330M.

We do not have a full load of fuel on board but calculations show we do have enough to complete the passage to Majuro under power. We have about 40 gallons remaining in the tanks and 18 gallons in jerry jugs on deck for a total of 58 gallons. Running at low rpms we burn about 1 gph which gives us a range of about 261 more miles. We currently have about 182 miles to go to reach DUD (the town on Majuro Atoll) which should take us another 39 hours and about the same number of gallons of fuel.

It is now 4pm and we are still motoring. We did raise the spinnaker again this morning and sailed for about 2 hours at about 4.5k but the wind came around to more Southerly again and we could not hold our course without the sail flogging badly. We now have 37nm remaining to reach the end of Mili atoll, another 63nm to the Eastern tip of Majuro and then 30 more to the anchorage for a total of 130 miles to go. We have emptied our 3 jerry jugs into the fuel tanks and we now calculate we have about 50 gallons remaining. We are motoring at 5.5k at about 1500rpm and burning about 1.2gph. We have 23 hours to go to reach our destination so we should be just fine and arrive with about 20 gallons to spare. Even if I am off by ten gallons we should still make it. We hope. Either way, it sucks and we are not enjoying the trip. The triple stress of having to endure the heat and noise of the engine constantly combined with the possibility that we will not have enough fuel and no wind is very trying. Additionally, there is even some question as to whether we can arrive before dark. Although assuming the 23 hour figure is accurate we should arrive before 3:30pm and that gives us a 2 1/2 hour margin assuming sunset at 6pm and total darkness at 6:30pm.