In the doldrums

Yesterday morning, we had a good start. We left the Flamenco marina at
8:00 a.m. and almost immediately were able to hoist the sails with a NNW
wind of 5 to 10 and current pushing us. I could almost see us in Manta
in 4 days.
Well, not so fast said Neptune. Since then, we have been shown what the
Pacific could be with no wind. We also had a display of thunderstorm
with a nice wind in them and 2 hours of heavy showers. If no water tanks
had not been full, we would have collected quite a lot.
Also, we finally scored in our competition with the fishes. We now stand
at 3-1, they took 3 lures, we caught one fish. It happened at 2:00 p.m.
and David brought in the boat a 3 lbs Mahi Mahi. Nice dinner !
Other than that, the main topic of discussion and thoughts and stress is
the range of the boat on the engine only.
I worked out that at noon today, we had been using the engine 18.2 hours
and burned 11 gallons of fuel, or 0.6 gallons per hour at 1500 rpm and 4
knots through the water. We had 74 gallons left at noon, so we should
be able to make it (we have 487 miles left to go) since we can't imagine
not having any wind at all. However, if the wind decides never to show
up again, we have a plan B which is called Esmeralda, more than 100
miles less than Manta.