What a great start we have had since leaving Minerva Reef. It has been a good sailing day and as I write we are doing 7.8 knots. The wind has been consistently 15-20 with gusts higher, but very manageable as the seas are not big. We have had our genoa and main both reefed all day. We started doing 9 knots and felt that was a bit fast, so Neil wanted to reef the genoa. We like to be a bit conservative so that our sails will not be under as much stress. Being quite old, we don't want to blow the headsail out.

We left around 8:30am and there was a race to the pass entrance as 4 boats left at the same time. Omweg left about an hour earlier and Margansie, Lufi, Lionheart and us, all pulled up anchors at the same time. It has been great having boats so visually close by. A rarity event for us, as usually we see no one at sea. We have had some fun chats on the VHF radio and taken photos of each other's boats. I have not felt sick today which is great.

I have spent the day doing very little apart from being at the helm, listening to my Ipod, doing my radio checkins and meals. I got a very big fright last night when I was using the HF radio to send my blog as the radio shut down and would not turn back on. There appeared to be no power to it. Neil was asleep and I woke him up and told him. He came out and we tried to see if we could find the power source as we had no idea where it was, as we have never had to touch the radio before. We tried tracing the wire, but it lead down a gap between the navigation table and electronic panel box. In the end Neil said he was going to bed and we would see if we could fix it in the morning. I was too upset to go to bed as the thought of not having the radio and being able to talk to others on passage was a horrible thought to me. So I got out the manual to see how the radio is powered up. I found out it is connected to a box and then from the box the wire goes to the battery bank. When I saw the picture of the box, it made me remember a box that I had seen mounted upside down under the navigation table. You cannot see it unless you put your head into a small hole below the cupboard under the table. I looked under the navigation table with a torch and saw that it was the control box for the radio. I have no idea how they mounted it in that spot as it looks impossible to get out, if we need to change the fuse (I also read that there are two fuses for the radio). So then I thought it could be a fuse or the power source directly, which would mean the battery. It was after 11pm by this stage and Neil had told me not to touch any buttons, so I went to bed and was going to wake Neil up at 6am to see if we could fix the radio before we left for NZ.

I got up at 6am and explained to Neil what I had found out and that I thought that there was probably some corrosion and that is why the radio has lost power. I thought this, as our forward toilet flush button was going very slowly yesterday and sounds like it needs more power. I thought maybe the problems are related. Neil thought it was probably the fuse and so I searched our fuse selection to see if we had the ones we needed. Unfortunately we had sizes, 1A, 15A, 25A and 32A and we needed a 30A and a 5A. Neil took the easy fuse out the one that was external of the box and it was alright. I said lets clean the terminals as he had to take them off to check the fuses, and then put them back to see if we have power and yes we did!! So corrosion, again a problem and I am glad it happened before we left Minerva so we could fix it in calm waters. What a big relief for me. I also quickly made a curry and rice out of tin chicken, tin beans and tin potatoes. I hope it will be ok as it is tonight's and tomorrow night's meals. As you can see we are nearly out of vegetables and fruit. We can't take anything into NZ so it all has to be eaten or thrown away. So far we have had two pasta meals, two meals of quiche and salad and now two curry meals lined up. Not the most appetizing meals but easy to cook and freeze. I forgot to mention in my last blog about sailing past Aka Island on our way to Minerva reef. It looked very majestic, a bit like the Marquesan islands. Looking forward to see what tomorrow brings. Our current position is 24 degrees 33.650 minutes south and 197 degrees 41.113 minutes west. We are currently doing a course of 212 degrees True and a boat speed of 7.3 knots in 17 knots from the east. Swell is 1m and we have 90% cloud cover.