14.45S 147.00W  Thursday 16^th April 2.00am  The water maker isn’t mended yet but we have effected some repairs and are quietly confident we should be able to get it going over the next few days.  In the meantime, covered in salt water spray from our return trip from the oyster farm, I am definitely having a bad hair day – Worzle Gummage springs to mind……

We were intending to leave later today but the weather and tides were good for departure and most of the others were off so we decided spur of the moment to go. I didn’t think we were going anywhere for a while as firstly when we put the engine on we realised there was a large hole in the exhaust – but a dollop of leak fix and it had hardened in minutes – then we had a bit of a problem with the anchor, chain and a few coral heads but with much backwarding and forwarding over the vertical stuck chain and graunching sounds of the windlass desperately trying to release the anchor we finally pulled away at 1300 hrs yesterday so have been sailing for thirteen hours.  The wind is behind us but with only 100 nautical miles to go we need to take it easy so we have the two twin sails reefed in but gull winged – like a twistle rig without the poles – and it is working well – very rolly though and hard to sleep.  We can see the lights of Zippy, Stargazer and Rascal on the horizon so we should all get there at around 9.00am.

Kofta curry for dinner with Bombay potatoes, rice and tomato with onion salad – yum!

Moonshadow has her new crew on board and just arrived as we were leaving, Tapistry has a good engineer on board and should be underway soon from Nuka Hiva but Cayuko, who has now left, has alternator and engine problems so I believe is going straight to Tahiti for repairs.  All the other boats are scattered across different atolls so we don’t hear much news during this ‘free’ sailing period.

Terrible fishy pong this morning – my 40 beautiful oyster shells were to blame – and covered with jumping bugs! – which hopped out and bit us all!  So, unceremoniously they were immediately committed to the deep………I am not sure how much time I would have had to make jewellery or buttons in any case at the moment!

Nothing else to report – we have a choice of two entry passes later this morning – one is deeper with a tide of  knots – the other shallower with only 4 knots against so I think we shall go for the latter……..