I really thought we had sailed out of the worst of the squalls as I watched the sun set on an almost clear horizon Sunday evening. Little did I know. Monday we had so many squalls that they all blend into one mass of rain and wind and I can't keep track of them all anymore.

There was a squall at the morning change of watch, that kept me up late. There were squalls during my off watch that required my help on deck. Robin handed me a breakfast sandwich just before a squall on my morning watch. The rain in that one pelted so hard it stung my head through my spray hood. At lunch, Robin handed me a sandwich right before another pelting windy rain squall with thirty knot gusts.

Sometime around mid-day, Met Bob emailed us and said that there might be a few “lingering” squalls for the next few hours. And also we should sail close hauled to make as much westing as possible before the wind shift.

Sometime in the afternoon, pounding into seas, beating into 25 knots of apparent wind, we put in a third reef. Sometime by evening we stopped bothering to roll up the jib for the squalls, just luffing up for the gusts. Robin came in drenched at the 1800 watch change, and a half hour later I was getting drenched again myself. I wasn't comfortable leaving the cockpit unmanned and counting on the self steering to handle potential gusts.

So by 1930 I still hadn’t made dinner. We needed a break, so I rolled up the jib, pulled up the board, and hove-to. The boat stopped, and stopped throwing spray. It was like being anchored in a gently rolling bay. I went below and threw the rest of the wahoo, some potatoes, onions, carrots, oil, water, sea water (for salt) and butter in a pot - Wahoo Chowder! (Finished off with some milk and flour as thickener). It was delicious!

At 2030, we rolled the jib back out and started sailing again. Ironically, we had hove to during a relatively calm and rain-free stretch.

Robin let me sleep late for my night watch, but when I finally got on deck . . . You guessed it - another driving drenching squall that lasted a full hour, from 2230 until 2330. The log notes, “squalls clearing out at 0100”, and the sky cleared to a dark purple veil washed clean of stars by the full moon, with only Jupiter showing through.

But there was one more cloud ahead, just a little marshmallow on the horizon that rapidly grew to one more steaming turd of a squall cloud (that's really what it looks like) at 0200. Which brought. . . . Light drizzle and a definite wind shift to the west, and no gusts.

So now, with 70 miles to go to the tip of Vava'u, we are going to be tacking upwind. Since it's another twenty miles from the edge of the island through the pass to the harbor, it looks like we have one more night at sea ahead of us! Still, it could be a lot worse - Windsong tore their composite mainsail and are motoring the last 100 miles into the wind with only a headsail to work with