Things are getting cooler. Our course brings us as far south as the Tropic of Capricorn where we turn North inside the barrier reef. The channel we follow at that point will be called perhaps unsurprisingly the Capricorn channel. AS we get closer more signs of human activity are becoming apparent. Large ships pass us by in the night taking minerals to China.

We managed to almost lose our spinnaker. The winds were light so we thought we would keep it up overnight sure enough at 3 am there was a strange noise - the boat went off course and the spinnaker was in the water. Luckily we were able to retrieve it without too much difficulty. The snaplock at the end of the halyard had gone even though the winds were light. So having debated the matter we decided not to climb the mast and retrieve the halyard but use our normal rig. A decision which seems to have worked out fine.