new record

I think I just set a new record for this boat -- between yesterday at
8am and today at 8am we covered 163 nautical miles, which is an average
well over 6 knots. Most of that was done on the same course, 340
magnetic on the autopilot with the wind just behind the beam, main with
2 reefs and genoa partially furled. Wind speed was mostly between 22 -
25 knots with gusts to 28 or so (against a forecast of 16 knots). Seas
were a bit too lumpy so it was difficult to cook any food, fortunately I
laid in good supplies of cabin bread, cheese, jam, and even some chopped
liver I made at Rarotonga.

Right now we have more pleasant conditions around 16 knots (against a
forecast of 11 knots) with seas still a little lumpy but much less than
yesterday.

Someone should make available a GRIB file simply based on the GFS model
but with 50% added to all of the wind speeds. Talking to a few of the
other sailors around French Polynesia and also in the Cooks, it seems to
be common knowledge that the most widely used weather model always
forecasts wind speeds that are pretty close to exactly 50% less than
what you're likely to get. Even the one English language weather
channel I found in French Polynesia took the simple route of reading the
wind forecast from the GFS GRIB and adding 50%. The GFS wind direction
seems to be more or less accurate, so if you just took the model wind
speed and added 50% you'd get something reasonably close to an accurate
forecast.

The new water maker is now working, more or less, after I replaced just
about everything in it I could replace -- perhaps 15 hours spent
servicing a brand new machine direct from the dealer just to get it
running doesn't impress me at all. At least Katadyn have replied to my
email giving me a few other things to check.