The day started out overcast and being able to see the sun today did not look promising. Yesterday late afternoon I had noticed a change in the cloud pattern and it looked to me that a trough was approaching from the south. However, the weather forecast that I get daily through SailMail, said that a weak trough would be passing by early Tuesday. What I was seeing was 36 hours early! However, the weather forecast was also saying that the winds would remain in the 10 to 15 knot range, day after day after day. Thus, I went to bed in hopes that the weather report was accurate and that my reading of the clouds was wrong.

When I woke up the skies were overcast and threatening. The trough had indeed arrived early. Fortunately, the winds were steady all day blowing between 10 and 15 knots. This is critical to us here in the lagoon in front of Lady Musgrave Island. If the winds blow 20 knots and above, the swells build and during high tide they just pass over the reef and make the lagoon a dangerous place to be. A boat will hobby-horse as the sharp short period swells pass by and then the anchor drags. The result is the possibly of being pushed into the leeward side of the lagoon's reef.

As the morning passed by the clouds darkened and we actually got some rain. However, it was not like anything that we were used to in the South Pacific Convergence Zone, where we had been cruising around for the previous two years. The rain was very mild and the winds behaved themselves.

With such a gloomy day, we decided to just stay onboard Leu Cat and hold a sewing bee! Yep, it was my first one ever. We have about 60 linear feet of hemming to do on our shade tarp that we are making. Thus, Mary Margaret and I took turns sewing, sewing and sewing some more all day long. By 1700, when we quit for the day, we had finished 20 feet. Added to the 10 feet I did yesterday, we have finished hemming two sides. The stitching is augmenting the grommets that I have put in.

During one of my breaks from hand stitching, I donned the hookah gear and went below to scrap off the barnacles that were growing on the bottom of the two keels. They were thick because I had scrapped off some of the anti-foul paint last year when I kissed the reef in Fiji. Without that anti-foul on the bottom of the keels, there was nothing preventing the barnacles from growing.

After removing the barnacles, I re-inspected the keels and was surprised that the underwater epoxy that I had applied, was still working great. I was planning on hauling out the boat in Mackay to reapply new epoxy. However, the keels are in such great shape that I am now going to wait until we park the boat in Malaysia at the end of the cruising season to do this. Yea! This means that we now have another week of sailing in the Whitsundays!!!! Plus, I will save over $2,000 to haul the boat and park it on the hard for a week.