Somewhere in The Pacific

After a couple of frustrating days trying to troubleshoot the HF radio I finally gave up. I pulled the entire system apart and hardwired the cooling fan on the radio itself to run constantly when the breaker is on. It seems to be helping but time will tell. I have thought it was a number of times before this so… My big worry isn't for us, we still could hear others, but rather friends and family ashore who would not know what is going on. After I put the system back together this afternoon it didn't work so I said to hell with it and had a nap. When I got up I tried again and it worked well so I sent a couple of short emails and a position update to Yotreps. I'm keeping my fingers crossed! Right now Toketie is about 60 miles behind us and if we can't talk to them for more than 24 hours we will slow down to get in VHF range. They are making for the same waypoint.
We've had pretty consistent winds for the past couple of days and we are making 5+ knots most of the time. Over the first full 7 days we averaged 100 miles a day, so we averaged around 4 knots. Not too bad considering the light conditions. After talking to Toketie, we decided to alter course for 5N-130W as the turning point. This on the advice of Don Anderson to try and miss the convection cells in the ITCZ. Since we left, we have seen only one ship other than the fist night. We are in our own little world here. We had a rolly night last night but put a lot of miles west under us. We gybed this morning and are making more south now to try and get into a bit stronger winds. That being said, we are cruising along between 5.5 and 6 knots under a single reefed main and slightly reefed headsail. We are at 13°55'N, 115°38.71'W.

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