Day 8 Position 24 31.559 S 170 06.197 E 1200NZT

Mark_needler
Professional Skipper
Tue 21 Aug 2012 00:12
24hrs run ~ 153
nms 21/08/2012
 
   We now have only 418 nms to go.....hoping to be there in the next 3/4 days
 
    Last nights watch was a case of feast or famine, one minute we were travelling at 9 knots the next we were doing 3.5, every time it look good to gybe and we did, it want to gybe back within the next 5 minutes, very frustrating to say the least.
 
     Weather wise it was a wonderful day with calm seas and little wind it would be nice to actually get some wind we could sail with eventually. The problem
is every time we get a favourable weather forecast it either doesn’t eventuate or we are too late!
 
    The forecast for today is supposed to be wind from behind between 7 to 20 knots, if that’s not a cop out, I don’t know what is!!!. I wish they would be honest and say we don’t know for a change.
 
       This morning on my early shift I woke to find that for once the wind had done what was forecast and was coming in from the south. We turned the engine off  and have the last few hours put in some impressive numbers, partly due to the fact we have a a following sea making it a little uncomfortable inside when combined with a following wind from just a shave off dead down wind, at 1115 we gybed back onto Starboard and we are now recovering our cross track error whilst travelling at a really good pace.
  
Top speed to date 11.9 knots, this yacht may not like going up hill to much, but what cruising yacht does, but it sure as hell likes going downhill! At present we are looking forward to arriving in Port Vila at some time just before the weekend.
 
Regards
Shawn & Mark, Quentin