Days 61 & 62 16:43.7S 167:04.9W

Five Islands
John & Sue
Fri 20 Jul 2012 03:15
Bit of excitement yesterday. After reporting in the last blog that the weather had improved we had an overcast day yesterday with a couple of squalls, one of which managed to blow out our mainsail. We had two reefs in, and no headsail up at all, and although we had a couple of gusts of around 25+ knots it wasn't particularly windy, and none noticed that it had blown out until sometime later when Sue noticed it through the bathroom hatch. The stitching let go all the way across to the leech of the sail right near the top and it will be able to be restiched no problems. We pulled it down and will carry on with only the headsail to Fiji, as we mainly use this sail anyway. Fortunately we have a brand new set of sails on board so we will fit the new mainsail when we get to Fiji.
The wind dropped right out last night and we had to motor for several hours and raised the headsail at sunrise this morning, but it has been pretty slow going today. Blue skies and sunny again though, so not too bad. We passed through the Cook islands a couple of days ago and right now we are somewhere between Samoa and Tonga, about 200 nm either side of us respectively. We are about 660 nm from our first Fiji waypoint which is the outer reefs just before we enter the Nanuku Passage at the NE corner of the islands.