Slow passage

Boundless 1
Richard Clennett
Wed 14 Sep 2011 20:50
25.52 S    158.01 E

Who would have thought the high pressure system would come this far north and we would now be sitting in the middle of it with 2 knots of variable breeze, no sea state
and motoring at 5 knots since last evening??? After 30 hours of good sailing in 10-25 knots of southeasterly, this is a bit disappointing!
It's one of the things about these longer passages, in spite of the best
weather forcast, anything can happen! We used the services of "Commanders'
Weather" for this last passage, as it is notorious for being the worst leg
on a circumnavigation. This group comes highly recommended and in our
brief experience with them, have been very professional and provided in
depth information, very accurate in a changing situation.
From the middle of last week it looked as if this high would give us
favourable winds from Noumea to Brisbane, however the latest weather uddate
yesterday was prefaced by 'looks like you will be motoring the last 2-3 days
of your trip.".
So, trying to turn a positive into a negative - Richard's new mantra - we don't have to use the generator to recharge batteries, we won't have to give any fresh food to quarantine because we will have eaten it all, we will all get plenty of sleep when off watch - on an unusually quiet, stable platform and the boat should be spotless for our arrival into Brisbane, hopefully on saturday. Unfortunately then we will be greeted by exorbitantly high Quarantine overtime fees to clear in (the captain can't utter enough expletives to make his sentiments felt on this matter - definitely not a positive!!).
We report in  when on passage (on the HF radio) to the "Pacific Reef Runners" Net, which we joined when in the Caribbean. Boats in the group are now spread out between Nuie and ourselves (and another Australian boat from Mackay who still have the benefits of the SE winds above the high and will beat us to the coast)!  It's always interesting to catch up on the whereabouts of people we have met along the way.