Fast Sailing
Exocet Strike
John & Stella Dyer
Wed 20 May 2015 09:01
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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
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