The Eastern Pacific - Pacific Crossing Notes: A Sailor's Guide to the Coconut Milk Run - page 251

Underway At Last
As we set sail on a course of 215°, dolphins escorted Namani away from the Marquesas,
and we caught our last sunset views of the islands' spectacular silhouettes. Steady Force 4
winds made for a pleasant broad reach and a solid 120 miles in our first twenty-four hours.
We immediately slipped back into passage-making mode: reading, watching the horizon,
and checking our lures for dinner. Had we not been downloading weather forecasts con-
stantly, we might have been lulled into expecting more of the same over the entire 540
miles to Fakarava. After all, most of our month-long passage from the Galapagos to the
Marquesas had been carefree, easy sailing; why expect anything different?
Dinner en route to the Tuamotus
But the wind dropped, and a series of mild squalls set in. We reefed the sails in anticipation
of each dark cloud line, only to wallow in the vacuum left when each burst passed by. An
inconvenience, nothing more. As it turned out, Namani was just ahead of an unsettled patch