2nd  November 2009 – Passage to Opua.

 0630hrs.

Conditions a lot more benign last night. We had squally weather all yesterday and after some hard sailing chasing Italians we were all a bit bashed. Anyway it settled down yesterday about 7pm and we had a pleasant night sailing with single reef and around 20kts breeze but it was nice to be dry and warm (in our foulies). Breeze lightened off about 0330hrs and we've now got about 12 kts out of the sou' east. I just got a copy on the Italians (Jakima) and they are now 12 miles ahead of us. Not bad given their nice new set of sails and N# 2 compared to our old #4 but I think they'll slip further away from us in this light air - we'll just have to motor faster than them when it dies off tomorrow as we expect it will.

Don's in the galley at the moment cooking up a breakfast of "totara Valley" scrambled eggs & bacon so the passage has taken on a new look. We hope we've had our "beating" for the passage. Not that it was anything like a beating anyway, but it felt a bit like it because we worked it fairly hard as if we were racing, which of course we’re not!  I'm not sure that there isn't a bit more down the track, but it's all looking pretty good really. We've set up a radio sked for our fleet at 0800hrs so I guess we'll find out then how we're doing relative to every one else, but I know of the 18 that left together, we've left a lot in our wake.

Don curls up with the outboard while ……..

Labby studies the gribs again.

1330hrs. 20kts SE on the beam. Flat sea. Brochure stuff.

I'm pleased I cooked up a couple of meals before we left. One was a sensational pork chilli con carne (recipe courtesy Anthem) we had last night with rice & sour cream the other not such a raging success was a Burrito filling served with spaghetti we had the first night. In retrospect I have decide that Burrito filling deserves to be served with tortillas, salsa, guacamole etc. as it is supposed to be, and not pasta. The Italians would have come up with it by now if it was. Today is a more cook friendly day, so I might get on with a Mediterranean chicken, a beef Tagine for tomorrow night and I might make some bread for the hell of it as well as some more tortilla wraps. Busy!!