Trade winds are characterized by blowing in constant direction at constant velocity. Velocity varies a bit more than direction.

(If you are interested, open your browser and try “www.windy.com” and look for the Pacific Ocean area of equator to about 40 deg S, and from South America’s west coast until the Cook Islands. There you get a good picture of the SE trade wind.)

This means once a sailboat enters a trade wind zone, like MaRe did after leaving the Gambier Islands and headed N for few hours, the crew sets course and adjusts the sail once and then it goes on for days.

We dressed MaRe in her night gown for the first night and keep it. The reduces the necessary attention to the TWS for reefing when the wind gets stronger. On the other hand we lose speed. This time we use for doing routine work, talking, watching the endless blue of the Pacific Ocean.

Like this morning when we had breakfast and talked again for a long time while also watching the sea, which became smoother. The swell is now down to 2 m or a bit below. Wind waves are still more or less the same. Around 1 m.

Looking at the endless blue Pacific Ocean, the running broken waves caught my attention again this morning. I like to look at the back of breaking wave and the white foam, which then stays suddenly behind the wave. Lost. Never able to catch up with the wave in down wind direction, and the wave then got swallowed by another, bigger wave. An endless game.

Yesterday, we got stronger winds during the day having MaRe running in her night gown also during the day, and we did not need to make a sail reduction or increase the sail size again when the wind weakens for while.

BTW, the noon day distance is 154 NM not bad for running constantly with reef 2 in the main, and for a while even with reduced genoa.