24:12.964 S  151:16.428 W

1/6/09   00:30

No stars. A muted moon penetrates the mesh of cloud....and the tacks go on.

Wind NNE Force 5-6. We’re tacking every three hours on the change of watch.

The reason I wanted to go to Raivavae first was that if the South Easterlies start it would be easy to go to Tubuai and then on the Tahiti, whereas it would not be so easy to go from Tubuai to Raivavae.  It looks like that might happen in a few days, so we may yet debate on where to go first.  It doesn’t affect our tacking strategy as if we decide to press on the, last tack by Tubuai should take us to Raivavae.

09:30

The tacking game continues. We are only 120 miles from Tubuai but that’s equivalent to 240.

The sun seems to be burning off the haze and we haven’t had any squalls for several nights. Wind is NNE Force 5 sometimes 6.

This is our 13^th day at sea and we haven’t seen any sign of another living soul or ship for that matter.

The old running backstays were wire and very unfriendly to the mainsail and the spreaders.

So we have changed them for Spectra ( a very strong non stretch rope).  One of the features of tacking to windward is the need to use the runners to prevent the mast from pumping.  The new ones when taut become a giant guitar string which makes a very loud noise when it vibrates in the wind.  Which it does.  Big time. Especially in my cabin.

On the plus side, our generator run-time is down by a third which means we can go 9 hours between charges, which take about 2 ½ hours each.

14:00

The clouds never burned off.    Yesterday’s run was a measly 140 miles with no engine hours at least. Wind is currently N4.

I enclose a recent sunset and yesterday’s ominous dawn.  Also a snap of the cockpit screen showing our track over the last few watches.   You can see it’s painfully slow, but at least we’ll get there.