To beat or not to beat

Miss Molly 4
Bob & Peggy Wilkerson/Geoff & Merel Pettifer
Sat 22 May 2010 08:57
25:25.69 S
168:05.34 E

What a difference 24 hours can make! We have forgotten about all the
boisterous seas as we got to significant smoother waters and feel rested up
a bit - heavy weather is fatiguing. We have sailed a bit and that was
lovely. Unfortunately the wind died off too much to just keep floating
around since we are still trying to beat the next weather disturbance on
Sunday morning. We hope to be in by then. If not, we will have to deal with
30+ knots winds on the nose. So Miss Molly is galloping on, sails on with
help from the "iron gennie", the engine. Averaging (!) 9.2 knots so we
should be able to outrun it. Of course it would be nicer not having to
listen to the drone of the engine, but not at the cost of getting clobbered!

We currently have company from another boat sailing/motoring? on a parallel
course to us all we can see are the navigation lights as it is night time.
Molly is taking the lead so we may loose visual contact when daytime comes.
We may try to hail them on VHF radio to find out more about our only friends
out here.

As we write the wind increases, making me almost tumble out of the nav station where I am typing. Stopped the engine and are now just sailing - peaceful! Doing 8 kts under sail and if we can maintain that speed we should be fine.

Only 190 Nm to go - run Molly run!

Cheers from us,
Geoff, Merel & James