Another great day’s sail with lots of sunshine – 2 sail reaching up until mid afternoon when we realised that we needed to speed up.  Goose winged the genoa and the wind also picked up.  After re-checking the information we had about Mahini, we noticed one comment from a boat who had noticed only 8 feet in the entrance at one point – well as we draw 8.5 feet that would make it a little difficult for us!  So thinking caps on once again and conflab with Malarkey and Victory as to what they wanted to do.  We decided on the next atoll of Ahe (another 15 miles or so away).  So now we really needed to speed up to make the entrance window.  All reefs out of the sails we made around 8 knots all through the night.  As we had made such good progress, we had to slow the boat down for the last few miles!  Anyway we arrived at the entrance at 11am (just 3 days and 540 miles) and slowly picked our way through – we had only 2 knots of tide against us and no standing waves so we go through no problem – got through OK and are now sitting at anchor in lovely flat turquoise water.  There’s a small village and white sand beaches with palm trees.  Guess we may have to rest up here for a few days!

24 hour distance:  175 miles  position:  S14.32.28 W146.21.477