We made some fantastic speed yesterday sailing with the fresh trades with two reefs and staysail, passing through another fun navigational challenge of Hicks island. Hicks was beautiful, probably one of the most stunning tropical islands we have seen on the reefs with excellent diving and kiting. The passage involves weaving our way past numerous reefs and bommies and was absolutely stunning. We celebrated with chicken wraps and a couple of beers.

Later in the day the wind and sea picked back up again and as we surfed and rolled our way through the choppy seas the auto pilot tripped at around sunset when I switched off the music system. At first I thought I had just been clumsy and accidentally turned off the breaker, but when it happened again I knew something was wrong.

We were well ahead of our schedule to meet the tides of Albany at 0730 the next morning, so we decided to pull into escape river 10 37.0'S 142 42.0E to get some rest and do some fault finding on the auto pilot. We anchored in 10 mow at the river mouth behind a small headland, aware of perl farms and not foul the boat.

We awoke later than planned, and set off immediately towards Albany Passage at 0645' clearing the river mouth at 0730, hoisted the sails and set off. We are now approaching Albany Passage. I hope we get phone reception to report in and send our blogs. If we are successful with reception this will be our last blog until arriving in Darwin on the 6th September.

Having loads of fun, fantastic sailing. Back on deck now to navigate Albany Passage