Day 7 - 31 04.93S 177 13.51E

Aurora_b
Mike and Liz Downing
Sat 6 Nov 2010 03:12
Seems like England! Rain for most of the last 24 hours - when its not coming down in torrents there's a thick drizzle, so the deck and cockpit never dry out and our wet weather gear is on for every watch. The temperature's down to 18C during the day and 15C at night. That might seem not bad back home, but for us it feels very cold. So cold and damp, just like England. The winds have been from west of south most of the time in the last 24 hours, so on the nose and we've been tacking and making slow progress against it. So we were very pleased to see the wind shift to east of south around lunchtime today. Since then it has continued to move east and is now more in the south east. The forecast is for it to stay somewhere between south and east for the next few days. That's great news for as although its wet and horrible outside and we're bashing directly into the waves, it means we can now set a course directly to Opua in the North Island in NZ. The noon-to-noon run was only 88.8 miles, but we sailed around 120 miles, tacking back and forth. We have 265 miles to go and hope the seas will lay down a bit to make it a little less bumpy. Good weather windows for this passage have been few and far between, so there quite a few other boats scattered far and wide across the ocean making the same trip. That helps as we're all experiencing the same conditions. One reported making 2 miles towards Opua in 4 hours!

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