There are five yachts at Minerva, each waiting for the "squash zone" of enhanced wind between two weather systems to pass through. The big debate here is whether to head off tomorrow or to wait until Sunday. There are two ways of judging this, depending upon the weather conditions between here and New Zealand over the next week. Firstly you ask Bob McDavitt in NZ who will advise on the weather conditions and plan the optimum route for you. Secondly you use one of the passage planning software programs such as PredictWind. Once you have fed in parameters such as boat speed under sail, boat speed motoring, departure date, planned waypoints and so on it will come up with four routes based upon four weather forecasts and overlay these onto the weather map so that you can follow your predicted course as the forecast map scrolls forward through time. You can see what the weather is forecast to be at each stage of your journey. It's all very clever but only as good as the forecasts. Each forecast (in the form of an electronic Grib file that the software displays to show the isobars and wind strength as differently coloured areas - blue the lightest through green, orange, red and so on) comes from a different forecasting agency and will be slightly different according to the modelling program used to prepare it. Each will become progressively out of date throughout the passage. For this reason yachts usually have the means of downloading up to date forecasts en route. In addition email contact can be maintained with Bob McDavitt who can revise your route and give you a heads up on the developing weather patterns as you go along.

In order to progress the Friday/Sunday debate eight of us spent the morning on Vega eating breakfast, drinking coffee and poring over the latest weather forecasts. To leave on Friday may entail a fair amount of motoring over the weekend whilst leaving on Sunday means better wind initially but the risk of strong winds later around NZ. I think the view was split and we all await the feedback from Bob McDavitt sometime today.

When not fretting about the weather there are various things yachties can do to amuse themselves, even on a remote coral atoll. Snorkelling and diving are usually high on most people's agenda. Reto and Angela on SheSan went diving here and were quickly surrounded by a hundred or so reef sharks. They were very inquisitive and even biting at Reto's fins. Then the reef sharks were joined by something much larger that menacingly circled the two divers. Reto thought it was a Great White but he and Angela didn't hang around for a closer look and were soon back in their dinghy having only been in the water for 10 minutes. Not all dives are as exciting as this and Ian and Stephanie on Nautilus found only beautiful coral and three reef sharks.

Yesterday morning we joined Angela and Reto, Stephanie and Ian and also Pelle and Ulla from Loupan (I must ask them what this means in Swedish) and went over to the reef at low tide for a walk. We were amazed at how flat and wide the reef is - maybe 300m wide. The rise and fall of tide here is only about one metre so you don't have long for walking. You can tell in the boat what the state of tide is. When the tide is in the sea comes over the reef and there is more swell in the lagoon. On the reef is a white marker light on a small tower placed there by the Tongans. Next to it are the remains of a previous light demolished by the Fijians who are in dispute with Tonga over territorial rights to the reef. We can only assume that possession of the reef brings with it fishing rights that can be sold or given to the Japanese or Chinese in return for all that foreign aid.

Annie and I would like to have snorkled here but the wind has been too strong to venture out in the dinghy with our small submersible and not completely reliable Mariner engine. We have (along with everyone else) had to hunker down in our boat. This we are very happy to do as it feels like we are snuggled into a cosy cottage in winter with the wind howling outside. The only downside with this is that we are reliant upon 15kg of stainless steel and 60m of chain to keep us from drifting onto the nearby reef. We get up from time to time to check our position on the plotter and twice last night the anchor alarm was sounding that I hadn't heard from the forecabin before getting up. The wind had changed direction to swing us enough to set the alarm off so we weren't dragging but nevertheless we must fix up something that we can actually hear!

Yesterday we kept up a nautical theme and watched the film "Hunt for the Red October". Moving into romantic comedy it was then "When Harry Met Sally" and, having lost track of the time, we returned to the nautical theme and watched part of "Master and Commander" before retiring to sleep through the anchor alarm.

Bob McDavitt has just got back to us - it's a Friday start with a passage that includes a weather front and 3.5 days of motoring.