23 days at sea

Twenty three days. Three thousand nautical miles. All down wind. Minimum 6 foot swells plus wind driven waves. For many days in a row, very pleasant easy sailing, day in day out. Other days rain and wind squalls one after another all day all night. That was a lot of sailing. You need to enjoy the activity of sailing itself before undertaking that much sailing.
Light winds try your patience and apparently make you a better sailor. We didn’t trim the weight from the boat for light winds, but instead packed it on for

the long trip. I am certain that cost us a knot. (Given the cost of goods in the South Pacific we loaded our boat with supplies before we left Panama. The provisions added literally tons of extra weight in food, fuel, water and spare parts. Much of this stuff should last all the way to Australia.)
It was our first experience sailing this boat on a dead run for any period of time. It was a challenge sorting out the wave, swell, wind combinations with our sail
configurations. Eventually we found a few that worked well, but still aren’t certain which is best.
During the last few days, the experience was an endurance challenge. Just keep the boat moving as fast a possible with the minimum of effort to get to anchor and stop.
Overall a great experience and an adventure. We can’t believe we did that.