23:51.993 S   147:41.370 W

3/6/09  17:00

We left at 16:00, motoring for two miles to clear the lagoon.  It’s gone very overcast again and the wind is NNW Force 4 which is just on the beam, so we’re sailing at a gentle 6 ½ knots.

21:30

The wind  has seriously dropped to under 5 knots. So after bobbing around for a half an hour, I turn on the engine.  The forecast is for very little wind tonight.

4/6/09    06:30

Wet night.  Very overcast at dawn.  The wind goes SSW so I am able to set the sails for the last few miles. We’re getting in before the South Easterlies but it looks like they will be short lived and replaced in a couple of days with strong Northerlies. I hope we like it in Raivavae.

14:00

We dropped anchor at  8:30.    We sailed for 8 hours and motored the rest of the 115 miles.

There are two yachts here, the first we’ve seen since leaving Auckland.  No sign of life on one of them and the other is a young Frenchman with  his 5-6 year old son.  We assume they’re French because of the French flag painted on their wind generator. 

The South-easterlies I was worried about,  arrived a few hours after us and have brought  pea soup with them, so we haven’t left the boat yet.  I does look beautiful even in this weather.

The up function on our remote control swimming platform   stopped working just before we left Tubuai.. It was too bouncy to unload the lazarette and work on it there, so we waited until arriving here where the anchorage is very calm. We still have direct manual control in both directions.  Steve just had one go at it but is must be a bad connection somewhere and he hasn’t found it yet. Plus it’s raining. The relays all seem ok.  So it’s reading and watching  a DVD time while waiting for this to pass.