28:57S 175:20E

Tuesday 20^th November – Truckin’ on to NZ

Progress continued smoothly until shortly after dark last night when we passed through the trough.  Our passage was accompanied by pitch black darkness, very poor visibility, plenty of thunder and lightning, a great deal of horizontal rain and Force 6/7 winds which veered later on from being a port tack beam reach to being on the nose.  Just what the doctor ordered.  Mr Perkins was called upon to save us the bother of setting the boat up to sail closehauled in those conditions because they were unlikely to last more than a few hours at most.  By 0400 the wind had backed to pretty well where it had started but was still around Force 6 and we had a rather confused sea to deal with.  But we were able to put Mr Perkins back to sleep and resume our beam reach under a double-reefed main and a lot of rolls in the Yankee.  Things got better at about 0900 and we were able to shake out all the reefs and later rig the spinnaker pole to take us downwind goosewinged.

However, by 1300 the wind had decided to all but die completely.  It is what the GRIB files promised but there is always hope.  So, Mr Perkins has been roused from his slumbers once again and we truck on at a somewhat stately 6 knots waiting for the weather gods to relent.  So, it’s 675 NM down and 375 NM to go to the entrance to the Bay of Islands and Opua.