We jumped and hobbled our way through Day 9, doing some laundry while topping up the batteries with our portable generator.

Even though we have quite a bit of solar on the boat, passages sometimes require a little extra boost. Navigation systems, autopilot and instruments run day and night, and that adds up. With sails occasionally shading the panels (or the clouds doing their thing), it’s nice to run the generator for a couple of hours and give the batteries a proper top-up.

So we ran it for a couple of hours and went full luxury mode: watermaker and washing machine.

That’s right. Laundry at sea. With a machine. On Day 9 of a passage.

We are basically living in the future.

Not having to handwash underwear in a bucket while the boat throws you around feels wildly extravagant.

At some point we also opened a pack of Air Clay for some creative entertainment. Initially it looked less like clay and more like something you’d scrape off the bottom of a fishing net. But after enough kneading it became somewhat workable, and the inevitable artistic competition began:

Who can sculpt the most realistic dog turd?

The results were… disturbingly convincing.

Meanwhile the wind eased off a bit throughout the day, and the waves followed along. Unfortunately the angle is still somewhat bouncy because we’re continuing quite far south.

Which brings us to the big decision aboard Akuna:

We’re heading to the Gambier Islands!

Very exciting for all of us, as none of us have been there before. The Marquesas would have been incredible too, but exploring somewhere completely new feels pretty special.

And it is for sure the tougher trip (I think I wrote enough about wind angle and wave and stuff!) but we hope it will be worth it!

From Gambier we might wander through some of the Tuamotu atolls that are also new to us and hopefully catch a friendlier wind angle toward Tahiti… though that’s even further away than Gambier, and right now Gambier itself still feels like it’s somewhere near the edge of the known universe.

Currently we’re doing about 4.5–5.5 knots with what might politely be described as a very responsible night sail plan. Full Genoa, double-reefed main (to allow for squalls that did not appear yet)

Could we shake out more main for extra speed?

Probably.

Did either Mark or I want to wrestle sails on deck at 2:00 in the morning?

Absolutely not.

So instead we chose the ancient and noble sailing strategy known as “that’ll do for tonight.”

Tomorrow might bring a test of the Code 0 (preferably in daylight)… or perhaps the hoisting of Big Red, our spinnaker.

Ah, the choices!

For now we keep pointing south and hope that eventually we’ll get to enjoy the sort of effortless downwind sailing that was clearly promised in the brochure.

Because as far as I’m aware, there’s no refund policy if the catalogue turns out to be misleading.