Day 3 Noon Position 28 50.17S 178 32.40E

Aurora_b
Mike and Liz Downing
Fri 4 May 2012 03:39
The winds have been back up to 25-30kts with some big seas, so we've been close hauled with a triple reefed main and small amount of headsail all night and so far today. However, we've still been averaging a reasonable speed of 6kts and as a result achieved another good run of 153.9 miles from noon yesterday. Its about 291 miles to our first waypoint at Minerva Reef. We had no intention of stopping there, but it looks as though a low coming across the Tasman Sea from Australia may arrive before we get into Fiji, so we may stop at Minerva after all and wait for it to pass. The weather in this area is dominated by highs and lows coming from Australia and the accepted wisdom is to head north just after a low passes and get winds from the south on the back of the low and the front of the next high (remembering that the wind directions round lows and highs are the reverse of those in the Northern hemisphere) and that's what we did. We've crossed latitude 30S which is a key milestone and we hope it will start to get warmer!

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