Elmo learned to swim at the beach of Kia Ora. We realized that yesterday and celebrated it with three scoops of ice cream per nose at the hotel lobby.  Snorkling has been great fun for whole family. Otso and Oona are using mask and snorkel while Elmo prefers swimming goggles (and life west).

We have now started to look for the good weather window for approximately 36 hours sailing leg from Rangiroa to Tahiti.  Winds are now very light due to the strong depression 700 miles south from us and waves are becoming high in next two days. We try to look for smoother seas to have comfortable couple of days on sea. We believe now that winds would be good in 48 hours and seas…well they could be little bit lower. See new links in weather page!

We also have noticed a need for replacing our lower aft shrouds as port side has lost one wire out of nineteen. Also our new autopilot has somewhat irritating problem. The attachment to rudder stock slips when using it over 25 knots of wind. Obviously this makes fine new unit pretty useless (I was worried about that already during the installation but was stupid enough to accept the work by the Oxnard B&G representative). Unfortunately, the installation had also other primitive errors, such as crease in the rudder arm attachment screws and no locking nut of any kind which let it roll out when we were on our way to Marquesas and caused the special quick attachment bolt to bend.  We will dissamble the unit in Papeete and try to make it more solid.