10th September

17 32.600 S

179 35.350 W



Weather; dull and overcast with rain showers, wind 5 to 18 knots, waves 2 meters



MANY HAPPY RETURNS OF THE DAY TO JOSH, HOPE YOU HAVE A GREAT YEAR AHEAD.

HAPPY GROUND BREAKING DAY LORIE AND DALE, THINKING OF YOU AND HOPING ALL GOES TO PLAN, CANT WAIT TO SEE THE PROGRESSIVE PHOTOS.



Well the wind stayed with us all night and we moved along quite nicely even if it was a bit lumpy and the motion made it difficult to sleep between watches. The swell died down this morning and we spent quite a pleasant morning sailing along until the wind changed direction and we ended up having to turn the engine on to keep up our speed. The day has been a very cloudy one with a few showers to keep us from getting too complacent about having the enclosure open. Every time the rain started we had a change of wind direction so we have been continuously moving sails in and out and from one side to the other. We are currently in Fijian waters but don't get too excited as there are lots of small islands that make up the outer Fijian land mass and we are slowly making our way through numerous atolls and what appear to be small volcanic outcrops, this is exciting in many ways as we know we are getting close, having said that it will probably be another 2-3 days before we get to
Port Denaray but at least the end is in sight.

It looks like we will be crossing the international date line in a few hours' time so my next blog will be on the 12th as we will miss out the 11th entirely, sorry Jean but you don't get a birthday this year, you'll just have to stay the same age for another 12 months!

You can tell that we are tired as silly mistakes are happening, nothing life threatening but for example Gerry changed the water tank over yesterday and then late last night he went to clean his teeth and the water only trickled out of the faucet, but when he turned the tap off he could still hear the water pump running. A quick investigation showed that he had switched the full tank to on but hadn't shut the old tank off which left the pump trying to suck air through itself, luckily no harm was done and it was quickly sorted out. We are still trying to catch that elusive first fish of the trip, every day we have the line in the water but the fish just don't want to take the bait, it probably has a lot to do with the inconsistent speed we are managing Ð it's either far too slow or we are roaring along and they can't catch up. We are still the only people in the entire pacific by the looks of things, we haven't sighted any other forms of life apart from a cheeky bird who used
our mast head as a perch (and crapped all down our main sail) for the night. You would have laughed to see Gerry trying to scare the bird off with the mast head light, a flashing torch and the air horn, none of which worked. The worst bit was that it perched right on top of the wind indicator so we weren't sure that we were getting good readings and if the damn bird would be heavy enough to break the indicator. It appears to be working OK for now so apart from the cement like guano which now decorates our main sail no harm was done.

Despite our efforts to get Sherard to stop for repairs in Fiji he appears to be continuing on his planned course and tells us that he is coping very well with all that has been thrown at him, with at least a further 10 -13 days ahead of him we think he's quite mad but hope that he stays safe, its too late for his sanity! The sun has come out for the moment and the wind is trying to decide which direction it wants to come at us from, the indicator is doing laps of the dial at break neck speed which essentially means that there is no wind for the moment, must be time for Gerry to play with the sails again!

So that's it for today's update we covered 140 NM in the 24 hours and ran the engine for 4 hours.