Fast Sailing

Exocet Strike
John & Stella Dyer
Wed 20 May 2015 09:01
What a difference a day makes.The rain went last night except for occasional light squalls today, and we had 18 to 25 knots of wind from a great sailing angle, and so we have been averaging over 8 knots towards our destination all day. Compared to a car journey this doesn't sound fast but on the water its pretty good.
One thing that constantly amazes me is that we are in a reasonably busy area for shipping and other yachts, but since the evening after we left Bora  Bora we haven't seen visually or on our AIS another vessel, thats in over 800 miles of sailing! 
As we approach Niue we may see the other three boats ahead of us, A Plus 2, Juno and Makena, who left Bora Bora a few hours ahead of us and went through the middle of the low pressure system, we seem to have caught up a bit, since we went another 120 mile north to miss the worst of the storm. All the other boats have now left Suwarrow and are on there way to Niue as well. Looking forward to arriving there, we take up a mooring buoy provided by the yacht club (no yachts actually stay at Niue, nowhere safe to stay), since its too deep to anchor. Its supposed to be a very rolly anchorage, its very open to the swells from the ocean. To dinghy ashore there is nowhere to pull the dinghy up, except onto the wharf via an electric winch, sounds fun.
Its interesting to see that the ocean temperature has gone down from 31 deg C to below 29 deg C in just about 24 hours,thats one terrific drop in temperature.
We hope to be in Niue on Thursday morning at our current rate of progress.
John