Noon Position: 18 04.6 S 146 13.5 E
Course: S Speed: 4 knots
Wind: ESE, F3 - gentle breeze
Sea: slight Swell: negligible
Weather: sunny, warm
Day's run: 83 nm sailed, 55 nm made good

The breeze eased to a gentle force three yesterday aftenoon making for very pleasant sailing despite still being a work to windward. Consequently, as we approached Mourilyan Harbour at around midnight, I decided to make the most of the pleasant conditions and to keep on sailing.

The forecast is for continuing gentle winds, gradually backing into the NE and N over the weekend, though by Sunday the breeze is getting very light, perhaps too light to sail. So, the question now is whether to keep on going tonight or find somewhere for a rest. I was hoping to catch up with brother Michael in Townsville on the way south, but he is going on holidays on Saturday for a couple of weeks. We are not going to be able to get to Townsville before Saturday even if we sail non-stop and I do not want to hang around Townsville for too long so, unfortunately, we will most likely miss seeing him again.

Again, I reckon I will just play it by ear - see how where we end up later this evening and whether I feel up to another overnight sail.

Meanwhile, one minor problem I have encountered is the AIS performing poorly. It is only picking up contacts intermittently at very short ranges, three to four miles. I tried changing over the antenna for the emergency VHF antenna but this seemed to make little difference. Next I plugged the masthead VHF radio antenna into the AIS and found the ranges improved dramatically, out to 25 miles as opposed to less than five. I have now plugged the short range emergency antenna into the VHF radio and left the long range masthead antenna plugged into the AIS, figuring the latter is more important for my safety than the former. The AIS antenna used to give me reasonable ranges despite being low down - big ships out to 20 miles and smaller craft out to 10 miles - so something is clearly wrong with it. I reckon when I can find a decent chandlery, maybe Townsville, I will splurge and buy an antenna splitter so that both the radio and the AIS can share the masthead antenna.

All is well.