Heading for Tonga day 10 at sea 18:47.683S 170:35.088W

South Pacific Familyadventure 2008
Claes Brodin
Wed 2 Sep 2009 07:36
The last days have been quite demanding at sea with winds of galeforce and heavy/confused seas.On the "coconut breakfastnet" at SSB-radio this morning,we learned to know that several other yachts had rough circumstances as well in quite a large area of the ocean.Today though,things improved a bit,and we can now sail with a bottomreefed mainsail,and a small headsail allthough "rock´n roll" is still a good description of life onboard.
This morning we passed the island Niue 13 Nm to port,but decided to continue for Tonga since our winddirection will be favourable for Tonga only 2 days more(acccording to gribfiles).Niue one of the worlds smallest nations(allthough close to New Zealand),gave the world .nu well known in the computer world.
In this writing moment everybody is sleeping,and outside is a fullmoon allmost in zenit lit on a quite upset ocean.Uncomfortable but very impressive,and when looking at the GPS we have 188Nm left to go before arriving Vavau in northern Tonga.If everything goes well we should arrive in less than 2 days,but since we cross the international dateline,we will loose one day of our lives and arrive Friday.See you then......