6th October

19 49.684 S

171 35.302 E



MANY HAPPY RETURNS OF THE DAY ABIGAIL, WISH WE WERE THERE TO SHARE A BOTTLE OF WINE OR TWO AND HELP YOU BLOW OUT THE CANDLES ON YOUR CAKE BECAUSE THERE ARE SO MANY OF THEM NOW!, LOVE, HUGS AND KISSES AS ALWAYS



Weather; sunny, wind 5- 10 knots, waves 1.5 meters



We spent another somewhat uneventful day in the last 24 hours. The sun was out making it a much more pleasant day than yesterday, the down side is that the wind is dropping and will continue to do so over the next 3 days. The swell is slowly following and began to drop away making it a less rolly ride and far easier to deal with plus we got some catch up sleep! The other boat that is heading in the same direction as us rocketed past us during the night and disappeared from sight over the horizon, with two engines they motor much faster than we can. We tried to keep motor sailing as much as possible but with the wind at less than 5 knots we were hard pushed to maintain a speed of 4.5 knots with the occasional burst of up to 6 knots. At the end of the 24 hours we only managed to cover 113 NM and we ran the engine for 19 hours. We expect it will be much the same for the next couple of days unless the wind surprises us and arrives early.

Our night was as black as the ace of spades until about half way through when the sky lightened somewhat with thousands of stars coming out to play, still no moon to speak of though. Out on the horizon there was continuing lightning for most of the night but happily it was nowhere near to us and we had no rain which was really good after the drenching we got the previous night. Dawn today was a little overcast but as soon as the sun rose and burnt off the cloud cover it has turned into a beautiful warm, sunny day. The swell has died away to under 1 meter and the sun reflecting on the water has turned it a fabulous shade of inky blue with sparkly highlights bouncing off of the little waves. All around us there is nothing, once more it's just us and an empty ocean as far as the eye and radar can see. We haven't had any squid or flying fish land on the deck to date, we've seen no dolphins or whales and just an occasional bird flying past, which makes for very boring watching.
I've even done the few bits of laundry this morning and hung it out on the life lines in the hope of giving us a bit more sail area that the wind can fill to push us along a bit quicker! So that's it for today, don't expect much else in the way of excitement for the next couple of days because we aren't, just a bit more wind would be good to push us along a bit quicker but at least we are still moving forward albeit slowly.