Wednesday 233r  May: South Pacific Ocean 18 45.6 S  169 10.0W  

Today’s Blog by David (Time zone UTC -11.00;  BST-12.00)

Let me introduce Rachel, a long time friend of Simone’s; they met years ago, in a ski resort.  Here she is with Simone.

Rachel has come to Paradise for a month –  to celebrate her birthday. What better way than meeting us in Tahiti, cruising the Society Islands and Suwarrow to be rounded off by a broad reach to Niue and then Tonga?  What better way,  indeed!  You will have read Blogs about all of the above,  save for this last  passage to Niue.  

It was Rachel that made most of the banana cakes and who experimented by adding chocolate to make a “to die for ( - or of - ) ” version.  She is a warm weather girl, loves the sunshine and gin and tonic sailing. Her visit to Suwarrow was just about the tops. Shame then it was cut short as Serendipity followed the larger boats out of the anchorage at short notice,  in order to “get ahead of some weather”. 

Things started well enough – we caught a sizeable Yellow Fin Tuna with which we could, conservatively fed twelve people (poached, with onion and carrot,  in ginger and coconut milk – served on a bed of basmati rice….Mmmmmmm!

I said fish’s insides  we found these two objects

These are clearly baby fish in some kind of (very prickly) protective jacket but I don’t know whether they were e.g. baby porcupine fish eaten by the Tuna, baby tuna (I doubt) or something else altogether. (Answers, on a post card please, to …..)

The Birthday Passage to Niue

The day after we left, we received  a weather forecast that said, essentially, if you are trying to get to Niue and you are at sea, that’s a real shame, because I wouldn’t be there if I were you!  An unattractive vigorous weather system was to form basically between Suwarrow and Niue  and it wouldn’t be much fun to be out in it!  Just my kind of advice:  “If I were you I wouldn’t start from there.”

Niue is basically South West of Suwarrow. Before we set out, we knew the wind would be light for two days and then fill in briskly from the south. To cut a long story short our plan was to motor southward from Suwarrow until the wind filled in and then turn westward.   And that is the plan we are  executing; we turned west at about 05.15 yesterday morning when the heavens dumped upon us and the wind arrived .

Since then we have been pretty much racing along westward.  We made good 207 miles yesterday, having logged 214 through the water – and average of about 8.8 knots (which by the way is fast, well,  for us pensioners at least!) and we have kept it up (.. the speed, love, the speed….) since. The sky have been overcast – in fact the whole thing  has been reminiscent of a channel passage back from France save that when the waves break over the deck, the water is at 26 degrees centigrade and warms you up!   You look forward to it in a self flagelistic kind of way.

Simone has remained in good spirits (considering she hates this kind of sailing, being heeled over and bounced around the piece, and would I please  get her there ASAP, (but can I keep the boat flat?)! )

We passed on the double chocolate birthday cake today; rather Rachel celebrated her birthday with a couple of well-earned days in bed:

Niue tonight, god willing…. and not a moment too soon!  Said weather system is developing, appears worse than was thought  but hopefully will pass 100 miles north of us tomorrow..

We will let you know….. but, whatever happens, this weather is going to delay progress westward.  Bit of a problem really, because Rachel has a flight home to catch next week…..   Ho hum!