25:08.501 S  152:12.398 W

30/5/09  17:00

A very gentle afternoon’s sail, ghosting along at 4-5 knots; when the wind dropped to 3-4 knots for an hour, I gave up and started the engine.

22:00

Still chugging away.  The wind has come back a bit, it’s now NE Force 4 which is precisely on the nose.  There is no way we can make any progress towards our destination with this wind.

Of course we could just heave to for a few days and wait  for it to improve, but I don’t  think my patience extends that far. It could be we wind up motoring  the remaining 360 miles.

31/5/09  07:00

We’re still motoring.  The wind is NE Force 4, sometimes 20 knots on the nose. We had one of those “Red in the morning, sailors take warning” dawns.  We’re motoring at 1800 rpm, no point in pushing too hard into it, making 6 ½   sometimes 7 knots.

There could be an argument for going first to  Tubuai  and then to Raivavae as Tubuai is closer—we would arrive in daylight—and slightly more North, so we would not be going quite so directly into the sea.  As I  type this, it sounds like a no-brainer.

So I change course 20 Degrees to  port and plot a new course in the computer.

07:00

Actually it will be a close thing to get there in daylight on the 2nd, as the sea is still slowing us down. Every so often we hit a wave which drops our speed to  5 knots.

The entrance is open and well lit with buoys so we should be okay.

09:00

As the sea builds, the motion becomes increasingly uncomfortable. We will try throttling back a bit and reduce boat speed to  5 knots.  It may slam less.  I’m going to attempt some kip.

12:30

Now we’ve got a NE Force 6 on our nose.  This is slowing us down even more, with the engine at 1600 revs we’re not slamming so much. If this keeps up our ETA will be the early hours of the 2^nd.  As we get closer we might slow down even more to arrive in daylight.  As Steve just said, we’re all going to be knackered anyway.

13:00

We’re all fed up with motoring so we’re going to try to sail north for one hour and then tack for an hour just to see what if any progress we make.

14:00

We just done the reverse tack and we’ll see in an hour what we make towards our destination.  Yesterday’s run was 160 miles including (ugh) 18 hrs and 40 minutes of iron mainsail. Tubuai is only another 185 miles, but it may take a while.

15:00

Just tacked again.  So now instead of slamming into the waves under power, we’re slamming into the waves under sail; actually it is  much more comfortable with the sails up and the iron mainsail furled.

We tack 6 miles up and  6 miles back making an equilateral triangle with our destination track and gain 6 miles towards our destination.  This will keep us out here an extra day but it beats motoring.

Its the same as motoring at 3 knots but pleasanter. And quieter.