If all things were to go to plan, we should be heading for Niue in about an hour or so (10am Sunday 26th May). We decided yesterday we would have more wind for longer, if we use some of the tail end of the unsettled weather here to make some progress South. The first of the expected unsettled weather hit the anchorage yesterday evening, and caught a few of us off guard...

It wasn't particularly bad, just 25 knots or so, but it came from the 'wrong' direction - blowing us all onto the shore from where we had originally anchored up to a week ago. So about half the fleet had to hastily up anchor and move to deeper water, i.e. away from the nasty breaking swell pushing us towards the shallow reef and coral beach, not to mention other boats. It was all very exciting and we discovered we were wrapped around several coral bommies (large boulders of coral) so it took some negotiating out. Just to add to the fun, when we did find a suitable place with sea room the swell was so bad that it broke our snubbing line on the anchor and the anchor chain ran out to its full length with only the last bit of line and shackles remaining; all very nerve-racking as we could have lost lost our main anchor and chain! As it is now, we have a lot of chain out wrapping round goodness knows what in 35m deep water.

We were fortunate to have the boys from Glam Galah nearby to help us out. They came over in their dinghy and helped Jonathan get some line around the end of the chain so we could lever it up (although Jonathan ended up snorkeling in the black waters to do it) - the snorkeling was fine, but the torch light reflected back lots of little eyes in the darkness, which was a bit unnerving! We then set up temporary snubbing lines and back-up snubbing lines (six in total!) and nervously watched the anchor drag alarm for most of the night. Thankfully we both managed to get a reasonably decent night's sleep though. We have heard this morning that a number of other boats here snapped their snubbing lines, so it's nice not to be the only one. (btw, a snubbing line is a soft but strong length of nylon rope which ties the end of the chain to the bow to provide some elasticity and shock absorbance; if only chain is used the noise is dreadful and the stress on the bow can be damaging).

Sadly though, our problems were minor compared with Ensemble, who did hit the coral and were holed in a few places. A team of volunteers has been working through the night to pump the water out and make repairs - it must be heartbreaking for David and Magali. Daytime has brought somewhat calmer conditions so we are all teaming together donating our repair materials, pairs of hands etc. to assist. Next decision is where to head for more permanent repairs, and whether to take the whole fleet as support.

Latest weather from Mike on Wind Dancer is that we may be holed up here till Wednesday now! There are lows developing all over the place between us and our next destination, so the conundrum remains - what to do?

Must get on as we have a lot to do and Jonathan is hoping to go over and help on Ensemble.