So, after a long hiatus, Irish Melody is off to sea again. Heading to Noumea later this morning after clearing Fijian customs. Aiming to update blog when possible. Sean is joining us for this passage, will be nice to have an extra hand (and a doctor!) on board.

Bula all. Thursday 26th June Hopefully we can post this blog - the sat phone connection has been playing up for reasons unknown - sunspot activity or time to buy an antenna booster - or too much movement on the boat - our last two attempts failed to send and timed out - very annoying at sat phone rates!

The last few days have been wonderful - gentle steady breezes on the beam and good progress, although the wind died off last night for 8 hours, slowing us down, but making it easier for the off watch to sleep. We have decided to enter Fiji via the main shipping channel to the south, adding another 47 miles to the trip but as we will be entering at night thought it best to take the better marked channel through the reef. Depending on the wind, we hope to be in Lautoka at Vuda Marina sometime Friday.

Great excitement today - we spotted our first mountaineous land on the horizon early this morning - the Yasawa Group - easily visible from 30NM out - a huge difference from the low lying atolls of Kiribati, Marshall Islands and Tuvalu, which can barely be seen at 5 NM. Then Tony spotted a whale a couple of hundred metres behind us. A humpback we think and then for half an hour we saw them jumping and blowing up to a mile away, at least 5-6 of them. A few days earlier another pod of dolphins visited us, and on Wednesday night a spectacular sunset, almost a full 360 degrees of colour lighting up the clouds all around the horizon. The next day was sunny and absolutely cloudless, (also meaning no squalls!), followed by a beautiful clear starry night - certainly makes for enjoyable sailing.

Anyhoo, hope your week going well, we are making the most of the next 24 hours at sea before the usual clearing in process consumes the initial hours after arrival, accompanied by tidying the boat, doing the laundry, and most importantly, having a cook's night off! Sota tale. PS Thursday 03 July - update - clearly we made it into Vuda Point Marina - this is only the third time we have been in a Marina with Irish Melody, and manoevering into the sardine like berths of the circular marina basin was a little exciting after 20 months of just picking a spot in a lagoon and dropping the anchor. Tony managed it all very well, and it was wonderful to be in a calm safe haven again! We are flying back to Brisbane next week, so more news then, and hopefully some photos!

Six days in Funafuti went quickly. Meant to get a blog posted earlier, sorry about that folks! Once we were checked in last Wednesday we organised to hire a scooter for the Friday and concentrated on getting our diesel exhaust fixed. Coming into the lagoon at Funafuti we noticed it was noiser and smellier than usual, and closer inspection showed the rough seas of the previous week had cracked it. We had new replacement parts on board, except for one, and decided to weld up the old ones as we couldn't disconnect the old part that was still required.

A short stroll across the runway to the Ministry of Works depot sounded promising but unfortunately their welder was not there. The annual Tuvalu inter-island games were on and most of the island was at the grounds next door supporting their favourite team. "Try the Australian Navy Patrol workshop, they have everything there!" So back across the runway to the Navy depot where we just caught two Aussie naval personnel on their way to lunch. "No worries, we'll give it a go, we'll pick you up after lunch". An airconditioned ride later we were gratefully watching Craig skillfully grind and weld our exhaust back together. Back on the boat Tone got it all reassembled, and when we tested it 24 hours later it was great , quieter and less smelly!

We spent most mornings catching up on boat chores and maintenance before heading ashore in the afternoons to see the sights and meet people. The runway, built over the most arable land on the island by the Americans during WWII was made from coral base mined from other parts of the atoll. The resultant "borrow pits" are now full of brackish water, rubbish and mosquitos. Many attempts have been made to secure funding over the years to remediate these pits, and we met some people from a NZ firm who have the contract to finally, hopefully, rectify this 70 year old problem.

Meanwhile the runway provides a vital link to the outside world and flight arrivals are a twice weekly highlight. We watched the plane come in both days, amused to see people, dogs, and vehicles scampering across the runway minutes before the plane landed, under the irritated eye of the local firebrigade and policemen attempting to prevent a major incident. The ear splitting siren of the two fire trucks signal a ten minute warning and amazingly the runway is clear by the time the plane's wheels touch down. The pilots must breath a sigh of relief each time they land safely without collecting anyone.

Although it would have been good to stay a bit longer, we were keen not to get further delayed and the weather window was looking ok , so we upped anchor around noon on Saturday and made our way out of the Southern Passage on the tide, which was a bit exciting given the 20-25 kt head wind and swell competing with the outgoing tide. The last few days have been boisterous, with the swell 2- 3 metres at times, and winds 20-25kts despite the forecasts... ah well, we've made good progress on the 569 nm to Lautoka, and now are over halfway, with 255 miles to go.

Today has been a good day, with the forecast 15-20k Easterly and the 1- 1.5 metre swell easing the onboard motion. Yesterday afternoon we were engulfed by a storm that took up 3/4 of the sky - we had thought we had managed to sneak past it but the wind changed direction completely and it came in from behind, with winds 30-35kts, gusting to 40k, and rain, for just over an hour. Think I managed to cope better this time, but still hoping we don't get another one like that this trip! Writing this blog to the strains of Leonard Cohen and New Order blasting out through the cockpit speakers and sending birthday wishes to Karen - hope you having a good day! Over and out for now.