30:27S 175:44E

24 hour run 111, slow huh!

conditions – 8-10knots nnw, flat seas

 

We had a frustrating night with light or no winds.  Yesterday afternoon we put the coloured sail up but at midnight David called me to say it needed to come down as the wind had completely died so on with the engine (again).    I blamed the lunar eclipse for sucking all our wind away.  It was a wonderful sight to see the eclipse in almost perfect, cloudless conditions.

 

After breakfast the coloured sail went up again and we’re now doing around 5 knots on flat seas.  The most frustrating thing is that Gulf Harbour Radio is telling us of a system off Northland that we can’t avoid with strongish winds, squalls and rain.   We always knew that at some stage on this passage we would hit a system.  They tend to come through from Australia every seven days and as the passage is a minimum of seven you are going to get hit.   As sailing guru Rod Heikell says,”it’s just a matter of choosing how low you want to go”, meaning, pick your time and hopefully you’ll only get a slight hammering as opposed to a serious one. 

 

Otherwise all is good on board.  The past few days have been beautifully sunny and hot – so hot that bikinis are back out and the men are shirtless.  However, we know we’re south of 30degrees because on night watch the layers go on....and on. It’s been bitterly cold, especially with the wind from behind.

 

Spirits are high and we’re all looking forward to a safe landfall at the weekend.  A Friday arrival is now out thanks to these light airs that have reduced our speed substantially.  We’re disappointed we’ve spoilt our record of not motoring on passage.   We never motored on either the Atlantic or Pacific crossings (apart from an 8 hour stint through counter current between Panama and Galapagos).  But we’re not prepared to sit and run the risk of more wind that we would like.