North Minerva to Fiji Day One 22 44.98S 179 19.47W

Aurora_b
Mike and Liz Downing
Fri 11 May 2012 05:20
On our way again. Left North Minerva at 08.00 this morning at half tide, so a lot easier to see the entrance. However, it still looks very small and it was a bit of a relief to get back out into open sea once again. The winds went round while at anchor and it poured - real tropical rain - a couple of times which did a good lob of washing all the salt off the boat. The wind this morning was about 15kts from the south west, so good to go north east. For most of the day we've had full main and full outer genoa up and been making 7 to 8kts in glorious sunshine - a lovely sailing day. The swell is only 1 to 2 metres which also helps. The wind is now coming further south and is forecast to go light and end up in the south east sometime tomorrow. While we don't want the 25-35kts we were getting on the way to Minerva, we don't want it too light either. Have just put one of our poles up to pole out the outer genoa, and it's likely we'll have to do the same with the other genoa before the nights out.

At 09.30 today we finally crossed back into the tropics and at last it's getting warmer - we've swapped out Musto foul weather gear for T-shirts - much better!

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