1st September

17 52.572 S

160 00.239 W



Weather; sunny , wind 3-10 knots, waves up to 1.8 metres



Sunny September has arrived! The day is just glorious with clear blue skies and a lovely shade of inky, blue sea, there are a few white fluffy clouds dotted about the sky but nothing that is going to produce any rain and probably not a lot of wind either.

Our overnight trip didn't change anything, we motor sailed all through the night as there was so little wind that we would have been at a standstill had we just relied on the sails. As dawn broke we looked like we would be facing a similar sort of day, yet again, and had to run the engine for the first few hours of the morning. Then suddenly we had a break through gust of wind, only around 10 knots worth, but as soon as it happened the engine went off and we had a couple of hours respite from the noise and exhaust fume smell, unfortunately it didn't stick around for too long so we were back to motor sailing before we had lunch. I made a batch of brownies whilst I had the chance and after that it was back to the cockpit with the engine running to keep us moving along. it's most disheartening to have to keep motoring but we won't be getting there until Christmas if we continue to try and just sail it. There was a slight chance that the wind would change direction and come fur
ther towards our beam which would see us moving along a bit better, this change sort of happened just after lunch and the engine went off for a couple more hours. At one point we reached the dizzy heights of 7 knots but it was a momentary aberration and we kept going at around 5.5 knots until the wind altered course back again and died as it did so. The engine was once again called into action and as I type we are still moving along under mechanical wind. The prediction is for slightly more wind tomorrow Ð can't wait to see that one!

So in a few words this sums up our last 24hours:

No wind, no whitecaps on the water, no ships, no dolphins, no whale sightings, no fish on the line.

We covered 126NM and ran the engine for 14 hours, we still have about 783 NM to the waypoint at Tonga with a further 500 NM to our destination in Fiji, making this a very long trip still to go.