Sunday 30th May 2010.

Passed half way around 0800 on the 30th. Pleasant sailing with the wind forward of the beam. Cool and overcast but we won’t complain about this. Evening brought the luxury of a sensational Lennox-King lamb curry, famous the oceans over and a comfortable happy hour. The autopilot had spat the dummy on day one so we’re hand steering but the sailing was so good over night with a full moon and tight reach that no one wanted to relinquish the helm.  Pity it’s not like this all the time. Conditions even allowed for the water maker to do what it does, and we filled the tanks again by 0130  - we were down to 100 litres from 500.

Monday 31st May 2010.

Never lasts though does it and the next day we found ourselves working to keep the sails filled with the wind having lightened and backed to the SW. Suddenly our ETA goes out a day. Although it looked as though it would work out to make a visit to Conway reef (an amazing little atoll 300 odd miles SW of Fiji teeming with big fish) with us arriving there about 100hrs the next day, the forecast gave us wind clocking to the NE at 15-20kts. Not what we want given that’s where we’re going. I made the call to flag Conway (yet again) and make some easting. If the wind (currently East) goes North East, it’d be nice to have a bit of  ‘money in the bank’ and lay through to the Navula passage. (Tough message to get through to a certain crew member who can’t understand why you would want to sail close hauled to windward when it’s much easier to sail to the mark – still, they didn’t win the war either as I have to point out on occasions).

So we’re close hauled again but with a nice breeze, still smoking along although 80nm west of the rhumb line.

Dick on the helm trying to get back east of the rhumb line.

Tuesday 1^st June 2010.

More of the same today. Breeze has been 25 kts and we’re double reefed. Parted the main outhaul this afternoon after a Harken shackle parted and shot passed my ear like a bullet. I jury rigged it but the kevlar line chaffed through quite quickly so back to the drawing board with jury rig Mk11. Still skipping along at 8.5 kts.

2^nd June 2010.

Making good time but a couple of boats locally have reported trouble over night. One at 31 South en route to Hawaii from NZ has blown out his jib and has no spare headsail and the other en route Noumea to Fiji has blown out all sails and has no engine (broken down), now heading for port Villa under the remains of a semi repaired headsail. I don’t wish to sound “holier than thou” but you’d have to ask your self a few questions wouldn’t you?

Anyway, the breeze held in and we made landfall at 1500hrs and through Navula passage just after dark at 1900hrs. All in all not a bad passage albeit one of slower ones due mostly to day 2, an unusual one in that we rarely if every had the wind abaft the beam – but hey we’re here and figure we’ve earned a ‘self congratulatory’ rum!