Fr... Fr.... French Polynesia Bound!

Well, it took a couple of false starts, but we're finally off and bound for sunny warm French Polynesia. The weather has been very gentle for us, which has been great to help us get our sea legs. Unfortunately, we've been beating into a light wind for the last couple of days, so forward progress has been slow. The wind is backing as I write, however, which should allow us to point more east along our intended route to the Austral Islands.

Notwithstanding the gentle seas, both of us are spending much of the day either on watch or asleep, trying to get as much rest as possible to ease into the shift work of sailing a boat across the ocean. The constant movement is a bit draining, which makes us apathetic and even the simplest of tasks seem Herculean. Our priority has been (and will be) keeping the boat moving in the right direction at a good speed. Sleeping comes next, followed by drinking and eating. The conundrum is that we have a boat load of fresh produce (that was already 3 days old when we left thanks to our delayed departure) and no energy to whip up any gourmet meals. That should change soon as we get used to life back on board.

While we have a long way to go, we are getting excited about home. Apart from brief stops in French Polynesia and Hawaii, we're on the "approach" home to family and friends. The lure of exotic ports of call kept us going across the Pacific last year, now it's the call of everyone we've missed back home (well, okay, there are still some cool places to hit on the way back, so there's still some adventure left).

For those of you who wish to follow our travels, we have been checking in again with the Pacific Seafarers Net, a ham-based radio net that records our vital stats every day and posts the information to the internet. I've listed some email sites below that you should be able to track us (if anyone finds a better site or way to do this, please add a comment to this entry). Our ham call sign is ve0dlz (that's a zero, not a letter "o").

Bye for now, Gary and Lo

http://www.bitwrangler.com/yotreps/
- A great map system, and daily log info.

http://www.pangolin.co.nz/yotreps/tracker.php?ident=VE0DLZ
- A chart showing Demelza's daily progress along with course and speed.
Check out the download link below to have the same software on your own
computer.

http://www.shoutcast.com/
- Sometimes audio from YOTREPS check-ins are rebroadcast here around
20:30-21:00 PST. Check the bitwrangler link above for details when
available.

http://www.aprs.net/cgi-bin/winlink.cgi?VE0DLZ
- Comments are fun, but the map is not so good.

http://www.pangolin.co.nz/yotreps/list_manager.php
- If you like the YOTREPS report on the bitwrangler site, you can sign up
to receive it in a daily e-mail here.

http://www.pangolin.co.nz/downloads/voyg_su.exe
- DOWNLOAD - A direct link to download software so you can track Gary &
Lo's progress on your very own map!