8th June

04 37.682 S

109 05.337 W



Weather; sunny with night rain, wind 10 - 20 knots, waves 2 - 3 metres



After the excitement of our early morning start to try and fix the jib furler the rest of the day was spent doing as little as possible. We sat in the cockpit and read or went below to catch a few zzz's whilst the going was calm. At around lunch time i suggested that we put the fishing stick in the water and try our luck which was met with derision and the comment that I could do whatever I wanted but he was having no part of it as he had done enough exercise with the winching for the day, needless to say the fishing rod stayed in its holder, no fish dinner tonight. Our afternoon was pretty uneventful too, with nothing happening, no sightings of ships, whales, dolphins or anything else for that matter. Dinner came around much too quickly and we ended up eating left over beef and the last of the fresh beans, some cauliflower and carrots. At this point we still have some fresh veggies and fruit, but I suspect that after this week we will be down to the tinned and frozen stuff.
Our meat, eggs, cheese milk etc is going well and we have enough to see us to Nuku Hiva and beyond. The bread that we have is now only good for toasting so I may have to make a loaf or two in the next few days, our dry stores are holding out well and most importantly our chocolate is being carefully rationed out so that we have enough until we dock. As you may or may not know we don't drink any alcohol when we are sailing so there is a good supply of wine, rum and liqueur in the cupboards waiting for that celebratory arrival drink, though I must admit there have been a couple of times when a good stiff drink wouldn't have gone amiss on this passage.

After we had eaten dinner the clouds gathered as seems to be the usual case and once again there was nothing to see as the sun set behind a blanket of cloudy sky. Oh, but what a night, as soon as the sun had set the winds increased and the waves began to rear up and attack us. To say the night was rough is no exaggeration, neither of us managed much sleep , at best we snatched an hour and then came back out to the cockpit. We roared along doing speeds up to 9 knots and then dropping away to 4.5 knots for most of the night. It was lumpy and we were being thrown all over the place, adding to the bruise collections. Just when we thought it couldn't get any worse it began to rain, and rain and rain. The cockpit enclosures were secured and we were as water tight as we can get but still we managed to get some drips through around the backstay which drip onto my seat ( of course it's my seat why would it be Gerry's?) anyway the rain has continued into the morning and we didn't so mu
ch see the dawn as knew it had arrived due to the fact that we could now see the rain and the darker grey clouds that are crowding the sky. If there is a silver lining I guess it is that the wind speed is sitting around 17knots so we are moving along at a good pace of around 8 knots, even if we are being heeled over by the swell. Ahead of us the grey sky has turned a bit lighter but the sun hasn't shown its face at all as yet and we have had to run the engine to top up the batteries this morning. Gerry has managed to furl the jib away and then let it back out again, it did get a little stuck but with some encouragement it did what it was supposed to. We are going to have to sort it out when we get to the exotic place as we don't want to be sailing without an operational jib for the remainder of the trip. Another "fixing job" has cropped up overnight, our aft toilet (oh no, not the toilet story again!)pump has slowed right down and is making some dying sort of noises, we thin
k that the time has come for a new pump Ð which of course we haven't got a spare of! So now we are down to using the forward toilet which has a manual pump system and should be good to see us through the rest of the trip. The biggest problem is having to get from the stern of the boat to the forward head, I see more bruises , stubbed toes and curses each time we have to use the toilet, either that or we need some adult diapers!

We managed to put another 153NM behind us in the 24 hours and just the 1 engine hour this morning. As I type the wind and waves are still bouncing us around and we are moving along at 8.5 knots for the moment, the sun still hasn't shown itself but the clouds are finally beginning to break up and there are glimpses of blue sky so maybe we will have a decent afternoon.