Just to let you know that this is David Mantle taking over the blog as Liz is not on this trip. Currently on board is Chris Day, David Barlow, Peter and myself. Jim was on board but that story will follow. We have spent the last two weeks in beautiful Fiji spending a little bit of time in Vuda Point and the rest of our time in Musket Cove. Musket Cove is on a beautiful island with three hotels a golf course and its own private runway (made out of coral). The weather was mostly perfect however there were a few days of rain. We spent most of our days playing golf, swimming and having BBQ's on the beach. What a hard life!! After much deliberating over the weather we decided to leave on the 28th of October for New Zealand to avoid the typhoon season in Fiji. We set off all stocked up and prepared and within 15 hours we had hit pretty bad weather with wind speeds of up to 55 miles an hour and a very confused and uncomfortable swell which made all 5 of us on board sea sick. This made for a very uncomfortable journey. At about 24 hours into the journey I heard a cry for my name and I came out of my cabin holding on very tight to discover Jim on the floor with a lot of blood coming from his head. It turned out that a big wave had knocked him off his feet and he had hit his head on the grab rail. Peter made the decision that it was too bad to carry on and we decided to head back to Fiji. We managed to clean up the wound a little and got jim into his bunk. It was another very uncomfortable 24 hours back to Fiji. On arrival back to Fiji Jim went off to the doctors and we all sorted out the boat which was a bit of a mess to say the least. Luckily Jim came back with good news that it wasn't too serious but decided that he would fly to NZ and meet us there. That evening we all had a massive dinner as we hadn't eaten in the last 48 hours.
So we have set off again without Jim. The first 24 hours we have been motoring as there has been no wind what so ever. It has finally picked up again and we are sailing at a pleasant 7 knots with a wind speed of about 20 knots. Hopefully the weather will stay nice like
this for the next 7 days