18:46:3S 178:26:2W

 

Thursday 18th June 2015

 

Wind, Wind, Go Away (well some of it anyway) and Don’t Come Again Another Day

After the successful night passage into Tonga, using all the techniques David had learned from Sidney Whittaker’s Book: ‘Night Sailing’(yes David’s Dad) and our idyllic stay, we’ve had a rude awakening. The last 18 hrs have been 30 – 50 knots of wind (Beaufort 7-10). Thank God WD is a heavy weather yacht! We had little warning, the weather forecast was saying 25knots, we reefed and reefed and reefed, now down to third reef and a pocket handkerchief headsail. The Bimini suffered some ripped out stitching before we got it down and the SSB aerial was ripped from the back stay – well I need something to keep me entertained when we get into port, mustn’t get bored! The wind has abated to 30 knots in the last hour and this now seems a calm and peaceful strength, it is strange what you get used to. Little sleep last night for either of us and we are working through our dry clothes, systematically wetting them. At one stage the cockpit was filling at least once an hour and WD is a relatively dry boat. But high breaking waves, spindrift and white foam are difficult to keep out. The grib file forecast says possibly 72 hours of this! We are just leaving the Pacific plate and entering the Australasia plate and consequently negotiating many atolls or extinct volcanic coral islands.

 

Miles travelled in the last 24 hrs: 137 miles