It was so nice to rejoin Canopus in Noumea on Saturday last 12 July, having had to leave her in Panama in early February because of a broken wrist.  And she looked in good shape despite my absence!  I had an uneventful if tiring trip(29 hrs) to Noumea except they lost my luggage and it did not turn up until 48hrs after I arrived, by which time I was feeling decidely grubby!  We spent the next four days provisioning and getting the boat ready for sea which included repairing one of the spinnaker poles with the end fittings I had brought out with me.

 We finally left Noumea yesterday 16th at 11hrs(we are 10hrs ahead of BST) bound for Mackay, Queensland, Australia a distance of approx.1000 miles and given reasonable winds a journey time of about 6-7 days. We safely negotiated the two passes through the encircling reef into a big ocean swell and 25knots of true wind right up the bum. We decided the conditions were too fresh to pole out the balooner(a light downwind sail) one side and the genoe the other and opted instead to go wing-on-wing with the full mainsail set and the genoe poled out to windward. This was giving us plenty of boatspeed - we were achieving 8+knots, occasionly surfing at10-11knots. Unfortunately, whilst Jean Michel and I were enjoying lunch disaster struck. An exceptionally large wave hit us on the port quarter, we rounded up , the geneo backed and we were then struck by a huge gust which refilled the geneo with such force that it smashed the end fittings of the pole we had repaired and also those of the smaller pole which attaches the large one to the mast. I suppose if truth were known we probably had up too much sail for the rather fresh conditions. We reefed the geneo and took down the broken pole and replaced it with the one on the other side and then continued with a reef in both main and geneo. However, we must see what we can do tomorrow to jury rig the broken pole as with the much lighter conditions we are expecting over the next few days we wll need to pole out both geneo and balooner. An alternative I suppose is to use the mainmast boom as a pole if all else fails.

 It is 0530hrs and I am on my second watch of the night. On JM's previous watch the wind had died away and he started the engine but it has now freshened somewhat and I have turned it off - utter bliss. We are making reasonable progress having averaged 6.3 knots since we left Noumea 19 hours ago.

Today Thursday 17 July, we have experienced a real mix of weather with the wind  backing from east through to north but generally light except for a couple of hours when we had quite a nice beam reach.  We are currently motoring.

This afternoon we jury rigged the two broken poles ready for use when the wind goes into the east again but I am pessamistic our repair will withstand the forces generated when the downwind rig is in full flow.  But we will see.