29: 37.073S 176:18.695E

At 37 feet in length we are slower than most of the other boats we have been sailing with and this can have its advantages. Last night as the weather trough went through we had slowly decreasing wind from the north, a bit of heavy drizzle at times and a pretty relaxed night. The catamarans and larger monohulls ahead of us had violent squalls with torrential rain and wind up to 40kts. It can work the other way, of course, and in the 1979 Fastnet Race the larger, faster boats missed the worst of the weather.

On longer passages a difference in speed of 0.5kts, which is what you would expect between us and a 43ft monohull, can add up. However this difference can be overcome  by pushing the smaller boat harder, choosing a route with more favourable wind or just being lucky with the weather. In the overall scheme of things a day or two on a three week passage doesn't make a huge amount of difference and it may be considerably less than that. We seem to have come across an exception to the rule in the form an Arcona 43. This Swedish built (and owned) boat is relatively light, has a large sail area and a deep narrow keel. These are characteristics of boats that are raced and boy does it fly. Last night it clocked 15kts - a speed I have never come across in a cruising boat of this size before. They have only had to motor for five hours on this passage (we and Nautilus - 43ft - have motored for around 30 hours each thus far) and the Arcona will be in NZ a couple of days ahead of us (on what is for us a 7 or 8 day passage). The downside for the Arcona is that sails seem to be changed more often than we make cups of tea and that keel is going to limit your coral island visiting potential. Nevertheless its an impressive piece of kit and sailed by a couple of similar age to us.

Talking of age, Annie and I were at one event in Tonga where, in order to select who would receive one of the many tee shirts given away by the NZ marinas during the Blue Water Festival, the men and then the women were asked to stand and then sit down as there was a backwards progression of years in which people were born. The oldest man and woman standing would each receive a tee shirt. No chance, I thought, looking at the decrepit old wrinklies around us. We would be sat down far before the winners. I was one man away from getting one. This was quite a shock because I don't identify with the more elderly of the sailing community - or any other community come to that. But there are clues. We are almost surrogate grandparents to the children of fellow yachties and, what is worse, older than the parents of some yachties. At the gym the last time we were at home I struggled to keep up with the overhead barbell pushups in the Body Pump class. I don't mind this but what does concern me is that I might be seen by others as "elderly". I might actually look old and wrinkly. Call it vanity if you will, but there is a big difference between perception and reality in my case..................