Gusty squalls with light winds in between have made for a soggy, slow day.

At the end of the overnight watch Saturday morning, I jumped into the cockpit just in time to start reefing ahead of a rain squall. I brought my rain top out with me, but started reefing before putting it on. I was hauling on the furling line just as the wind hit its peak gust or 32 knots, and just as the wall of rain hit. With two hands on the wheel, I never had a chance to suit up, and got drenched. Shivering in the tropics again!

We had more rain squalls all day and light shifty winds in between. We gybed the Genoa and spinnaker pole at 1600, thinking the wind shift to NE was permanent. It wasn't.

Whatever lesson you learn from the last squall seems useless for the next. It's always a guessing game whether to reef, and when to un reef. Until today, you could count on the strongest winds hitting before the rain. So when a squall was coming at 1800, we rolled up most the jib ahead of it. The rain hit, and winds gusted to 27 knots or so, then dropped to 10-15. I unrolled the jib to get moving again, in the rain.

But then another band of heavy rain hit, with winds gusting to 32 knots again. I was at the wheel with the full Genoa out, surfing the waves, spray flying, not sure what to do if the wind increased more. The stronger the wind, the harder it is to roll part of the sail in.

Running off before the squalls without reefing is a common practice - sailing weather gurus Steve and Linda Dashew describe strategies to stay in a squall longer and keep riding the wind gusts in their classic book Mariners Weather. But eventually, running downwind may stress your rig to failure as the sail tries to pull the hull faster than the water will let it go.

Windsong had reported forty knot gusts today. That's more wind than I want to run with the full genny in. And at that point, if you luff up to reef you will flog the sail and suffer a knockdown.

So for the next squall line - at the start of my overnight watch Saturday night �" I reefed early, and figured I would leave the jib mostly rolled up until the skies cleared enough to see the moon. And it kept raining. And the wind dropped to ten knots and stayed there. We limped along at two knots. And it kept raining. Eventually, I took a chance and rolled out the jib at 2300. It kept raining until about one am, but the winds did not come back up at all until after it cleared.

All this short canvas sailing and shifting winds have made for slower progress than we had hoped. We are now in a race with the wind shift forecast for Tuesday, when the winds will turn westerly, against us. We hoped to make the turn at the north end of Vava'u by Monday night, but that is looking very unlikely with 315 miles to go still.