A noon-to-noon run of 119.4 miles - the same as yesterday. So we're averaging 5kts to keep in sight of Troutbridge. Pulled away a bit this morning as the winds increased, but have reduced sail to hardly anything and making 3-4kts to allow them to catch up again. Wind is very variable in speed - going up and down and is anything from 8 to 15kts from the east. Swell has settled to about 6 to 8 ft from the east, but with an occasional, and much larger, long period swell from the south east. The sun has been out most of the day and we had a spectacular orange sunrise this morning as it poked over the horizon with a scattering of very black clouds in front of it. Henrietta hydrovane is steering the boat. Going slowly as we are, Ted the tow generator isn't putting in enough amps to run both the autopilot and fridge without running the batteries down. When using the hydrovane in place of the autopilot, we make more electricity than we use, and so charge up the batteries. On a mooring in Palmerston, electricity wasn't a problem - in 25-35kts the wind generator fully charged all batteries!
