Position: S 26d50m E 178d 19m

It's just about noon and this day's 24 hr run was 133NM, for a total of 674 since we left Vava'u which is pretty good counting the day with very little wind. Right now we have a strong current against us (almost 2kts) but hopefully it'll dissipate soon. The Thursday-Friday window still looks tricky on the latest gribs but Saturday and on looks good. I have done several routings with Maxsea in the last couple days and they're coalescing on a Saturday 21st or Sunday 22nd arrival. I have worked on the polars of the boat (expected speed thru water for a given wind speed and direction on a given course) and saved them in a file.
Then Maxsea uses the gribs (computer outputs from forecasting models for up to 10 days ) and with the knowledge of the polars, the routing module compute the best route to take and expected arrivals. Thar of courses assumes that you'll sail at the polars entered and that the forecasting model has swallowed fewer acid trips than usual! But the polars I entered yesterday seem to be pretty good because I've been sailing at roughly 90 to 110% of the polars (meaning the entered predicted speeds are fairly accurate). Short version: I'm getting more confident that we'll get there roughly at the end of the week.

I feel like I'm in Northern Brittany: gray sky, drizzly, gray ocean.
It's not too cold but I don't go outside unless I have to!

This morning was bilge duty: sponged out about 4.5 gallons. My 6 bananas developed a black butt, not brown, solid black. So I made banana kefir sweetened with honey from the Marquesas. Really good and none of these products are allowed into NZ, I have to put everything that's not man-made chemicals in a heavy duty trash bag, before I land, and hand it to my friendly customs officer before I set foot on that island. I even washed my bike and the soles of my sneakers, before leaving Vava'u. So I'd better find some kefir grains in NZ.

I wrote JC and Francoise yesterday and they told me that Melimila had just gotten into port with a broken goose-neck (what attaches the boom to the mast- and a weak point on many boats) after hitting the same trough I had. Except they got 50 kts winds the poor guys (gust in a squall - but that's high. With Evan we got 42 kts in a squall in the Atlantic but 50kts sounds like a micro burst).