We have a full moon at the moment and last night’s sailing was just been amazing. Never in our lives have we sailed in such bright night conditions. It just does not get dark, and you can see everything on deck when working. The moon has been up all night, reflecting off the waves and lighting up the sea. Totally magical. Only the brightest stars make it onto the celestial ceiling in these conditions.

They say the best time to pass through the Tuamotus is during full moon to give you the best visibility on the atolls at night, so we managed to achieve that two nights ago.

We are now down to 135 miles to Tahiti which will take about a day (and a night) if the wind holds; we are looking forward to all that Tahiti has to offer.

As an aside, we’ve been discovering new things to do with coconuts. Having been gifted three green coconuts and one brown one in Makemo, we then had the challenge of opening them on the back of the boat – that’s another story – and then processing the contents. So far we’ve had coconut and cabbage slaw, coconut stir-fry and salted roasted coconut chips; we’re working on drying some grated flesh for ANZAC cookies and some chips for granola, and I’m sure we’ll come up with some other inventions soon. We had a delicious coconut and garlic sauce for fish in Hiva Oa that we’d like to replicate – but there’s a sad lack of fish in our bit of the Pacific just now.