Day 15, Passage to Easter Island

1245Z 11SEP19, Day 15, Ecuador to Easter Island. We continue to make direct progress and good speed. Things are very much the same. The winds and seas are slowly coming back down - very slowly. We keep thinking they are down for good, and then get another round of gusts and some waves that we surf or that smack against our side. We are (still) hoping things will continue to settle today, though we'd like to keep enough wind to make 6+kts.

Current Position: 24 26S 106 25W
24 hour progress: 151nm, 6.3kts avg SOG. Overall progress for the passage is 2075nm with approximately 230nm to go. The weather continues to be a mix of sun and clouds. The past days have been more gray than sun. Winds continue to vary and are averaging around 20kts. We are currently sailing a beam to broad reach with 3 reefs in the main and the full genoa. The main will likely have some reefs shaken out soon, though it's really mostly the genoa that is powering us on.

The crew is well and looking forward to landfall. Daxton seems to have recovered just fine from his 24 hour bug. We are still hoping to be anchored off of Easter Island before dark on the 12th, and that is still looking possible but very tight to make. The moon will help as it continues to wax and is up before sunset currently. That is as long as it isn't hidden behind clouds. We were about 300nm from the anchorage at sunset last night. So that means we need to put up 1.5 days more worth of 150nm days / 6.2kts SOG to make it. Good news is that we have been making that kind of speed this passage. Bad news is that it isn't easy for us and the past days are no guarantee that we will keep putting up that kind of mileage / speed, particularly as the wind dies down. We continue to watch and monitor and remain open to the possibilities and alternatives.

Random milestones: Yesterday we passed 17,000nm total distance logged on our GPS. So in our 2 years of cruising (we hit the 2 year mark later this month) we have traveled over 17k nautical miles! Yesterday we also passed the 2,000nm mark for this passage.