Hiva Oa Day 5 Passage Update: Cloudy, Better Sailing, and Food

Summary: We had a reasonable day of sailing with some sun breaks but mostly cloudy. More rain and squalls throughout the night, but nothing strong enough that we needed to reef.
Position: 07 54.01 S 099 40.73 W at 12:10 pm CST
COG: 248 degrees m
Distance : 170 nm (24 hr), 780 nm total
Average Speed 7.08 kts (24 hr)
Distance to go to Hiva Oa: 2,314 nm
Sailing conditions have generally improved for us, but the weather has still been cloudy and rainy. Conditions seem most variable early in the morning and just after sunset. We’re now on a rhumb line reach for the Marquesas. Speed has been variable last night and this morning from 6 – 8.5 kts.
Wildlife Sightings: Lots of flying fish zipping along with us. More sea birds
In other news, we were eager to try out Counting Star’s bread recipe but we can’t seem to find the yeast we thought we had brought. Instead we baked lemon muffins this morning in the convection microwave while topping up the batteries with the generator. The solar panels haven’t been helping much with power due to the cloudy conditions.
We spent a lot of time running around Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island provisioning for the passage. There were more stores and more supplies available than we found on San Cristabol and certainly Isla Isabela. We stocked up on chicken, ground beef, steak, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, melons, apples, pears, garlic, rice, beans, peanut butter ($14 a jar!!), chips, ice cream and more. In order to save some trouble underway, especially in unfavorable seas we pre-cooked many meals and sealed them up with our trusty vaccu-sealer for the freezer. If cooking is too difficult, it’s an easy matter of pulling a bag out of the freezer and heating on the stove (in the microwave if the engine or generator are running). We even found a nice little Italian restaurant and had them make up 4 orders of lasagna to-go for us. They were a little surprised that we wanted it cold as we explained that it was for our boat trip. We’re working on a future post of all the foods we miss and rarely or never find.
One example near and dear to our hearts has been finding decent chocolate (ie: not Hershey’s or some local high-sugar milk chocolate brand). There have been exceptions. We found a small place in Costa Rica making their own bars and truffles from locally grown coco and doing it right. We had a tour in Mexico at a woman’s house/kitchen who makes her own chocolate by hand from beans to coco, but she doesn’t make bars ready to eat even though the chocolate was pure and delicious. In the Galapagos we found the Ecuadorian Pacari brand in more creative flavors than you can imagine, but it was expensive at about $3 for 50 grams. Of course, that didn’t stop us from trying several. We also found a small artisan shop in the Galapagos near the Darwin Research Center making delicious chocolate turtles from Ecuadorian chocolate and beans. We also found some really tasty chocolate ice cream at the Galapagos Deli. It was the best ice cream we had since La Paz, MX so we bought a pint of chocolate and their passion fruit sorbet for a special treat along the passage.
Here’s what we’ve eaten for dinner over the last week if you are curious:
Monday: Canned chili and salad Tuesday: Beef & Broccoli (precooked) Wednesday: Rice, beans, and beef burritos (made with precooked ingredients) Thursday: Spaghetti (cooked) and carrots (raw), brownies for dessert Friday: BBQ chicken, rice, brussell sprouts, (precooked) and lentils (cooked) Saturday: Tenderloin (precooked), mashed potatoes, and salad with lemon pound cupcakes for dessert (baked)