Kelcey Chandler-Yates and Jim Yates present...

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Chris spent 3 hours up the mast 2000 miles from the nearest
 land fixing the broken spinnaker halyard and chafe problem.
  Thank goodness he had his Astroman Harness from Yates Gear!

May 15 2002
Many fish hooked today and only two brought to the boat and both happened to be by yours truly!! One was a small Mahi Mahi, which was perfect for lunch and the other was a huge Spanish mackerel ... HEAD - yep a 10-pound head with huge teeth marks in him! Don't want to start stopping the boat for swims any time soon!

We had huge tuna jumping everywhere around us today - hooked a bunch of them but they were too large for our 50 lb test line-just snapped it off as fast as we put it in the water. Now we are going to trail the 100 lb test hand line and bring them in! No bites yet but come morning I'm sure there will be. OHHHHH also Jim went to bed tonight and laid upon his pillow to the smell of fish - a flying fish had flown in the hatch and landed right in front of his nose! Time for bed

May 19th 2002
Two more mahi mahi for dinner tonight-not much else-been making earrings with Nick and being a slave driver to the kids so homework gets finished soon-A summer break will be MUCH appreciated by ME! I'm sure by them too although they will be writing in their journals and studying typing and French until they begin the next year.

Time for my watch-2am and I'm tired tonight but I'm sure the salt air will rejuvenate!

May 23, 2002
Today was a beautiful one. The winds were light and we didn't feel like listening to the motor so we put up our reaching head sail and our spinnaker and with over 1000 ft. of sail in front of us moved on the calm sea at between 4-5 knots for over 4 hours. Then we had a nice squall which washed off the boat and gave us a bit more water in our tanks followed by a steady 18 knots of wind on our beam for the rest of the day and into the eve. At sunset, once again we were escorted for over an hour by spotted dolphins that were as curious about us as we were they. Couldn't ask for a better day-even caught another dorado for dinner. Looks like about five more days and we will be there-I think I'll miss the solitude of the open sea.

May 25, 2002
Yesterday early morning, Chris and I were able to surf waves in 22 knots of wind and have a blast thru out both of our watches. Today has been a terrible day - sail changes literally every 15 minuets.  We are all so tired I am surprised we haven't said things we shouldn't but I believe we are numb by this point. Our goal has been to sail as much as possible as fuel is outrageously expensive in French Polynesia. Now we are wishing those light days we would have motored as our friends in a larger boat just pulled into port today. It would be glorious to have a full nights sleep. However, three more days at least we have to go. Squalls are ever present so the wind speed may change drastically from minute to minute. Take for instance right now - I have 21 knots of true wind where when I began to write I had 12! At 22, I must begin to think about reefing (basically cutting our amount of sail we have exposed to the wind) but in a squall, it could run to 30 within a few min. If I reef the main in precaution then at 12 knots we don't move! Luckily, these quick wind speed changes are not the norm.

We did manage to land a 26 lb. Black fin tuna, which has been very tasty for the past 2 days, but the rest has generally been terrible and we all can't wait to see land.