11th October

25 03.764 S

160 40.921 E



Weather; sunny, wind 7 -18 knots, waves 1.5 meters



Another good day of sailing. The sun was out, the swell was tolerable and the wind was pretty constant on our port side and just aft of the beam. There really isn't much to say about the sailing, it was easy and pleasant for a change. We did 154 NM in the 24 hours and didn't run the engine at all. Interestingly as we are now sailing directly west the sun isn't on our solar panels for long enough each day to top up our battery bank as the sun is blocked out by the sails so having to start either the engine or the gen set is a must to keep enough power in the bank to run the electrics (the auto pilot, navigation lights, fridge and freezer) during the night, the wind generator works as long as there is wind to drive it but it doesn't supply enough power on its own to meet the boat's needs. Gerry had been saying all day that there was supposed to be a wind direction change and we were going to have to gybe and change the spinnaker pole over but by the time the sun set (no green f
lash Ð there's a surprise!) the wind was still on our port side but moving very slowly towards dead astern, not time to make the change over. The crescent moon came out along with the stars and a covering of cloud began to build behind us. The moon soon disappeared below the horizon and the cloud cover began to envelope us turning the sky to that horrid pitch black that we seem to see each night. Around midnight the wind had finally moved to the stern and about an hour later was decidedly heading more to the starboard side than the port, the time had come to do the change around, of course it couldn't have done this during daylight hours! Gerry decided that we were only going to gybe and move the main across leaving the spinnaker pole where it was until the morning and to this end he got geared up to go out on deck. The process by now should be a well-oiled one but this time things didn't go quite to plan. We started off OK , taking the running backstay off and moving the ma
in across to the centreline on the traveller and then Gerry went out on deck to move the preventer across and it went to the dogs. I have talked about the preventer a few times so for those of you that don't know our preventer is a 4 stranded pulley system, one end attaches to the boom at about the midpoint and the other end attaches to a track on the cap rail with the bitter end of the rope strands running back to the cockpit, through a block and then onto a winch. The purpose of it is to stop the boom from crashing uncontrolled from one side of the boat to the other when the wind or boat changes direction. So Gerry is out on deck, he undoes the pulley from the deck and passes it across to the other side of the boat and then goes around to that side to secure it, only for some unknown reason this time when he passed the end across he managed to twist the pulley system in such a way that the lines were all crossed, there was much mumbling and a whole lot of sailor speak go
ing on for the time that it took him to unwind the tangled mess, which he made worse by unravelling it the wrong way to begin with but finally got it straightened out and attached to the track on the cap rail. The bitter end got thrown to me as normal and I threaded it through the block and got it onto the winch, by which time Gerry had returned to the cockpit and we began to ease the main over to the port side. As we did this I noticed that the preventer was on the wrong side of the line which runs to the spinnaker pole and alerted Gerry to the fact, much more sailor speak followed as he then had to go back out on deck and undo the pulley from the track, pass it over the top of the offending line and re attach it once more. This done and Gerry once more in the cockpit we recommenced moving the main across, only to realise that the bitter end that he had thrown to me was caught under the Yankee sheet which meant we wouldn't be able to deploy the Yankee, oh dear, the sky was
turning blacker by the second with sailor speak. Once more unto the breach, or maybe I should say back out on deck for Gerry. The bitter end had to be undone, pulled all the way back to the pulley then threaded the right side of the spinnaker sheet, thrown back to me and re run through the block and on to the winch, this time it was right and we managed to move the main across and tighten down the preventer to keep it in place. To say that was the worst go we have ever had at changing the preventer from one side to the other is no exaggeration. I was so very happy that we weren't going to be moving the spinnaker pole across at this point, I could just imagine the disaster that could have been. For the remainder of the night we flew just the main and managed to move along at a reasonable pace. First job of the day once the dawn broke Ð moving the spinnaker pole across to the starboard side so we would be able to goose wing assuming that the wind direction remained aft. Even b
efore we had breakfast the job was done, not with a happy smiling face from me, it's the one job that I have come to dread and hate doing, the winching leaves me exhausted before the day has even begun and the niggly instructions and answering back is part and parcel of the procedure unfortunately. Any how it was done without the drama of last night being repeated and we deployed the Yankee to balance out the main until the wind clocked around even further onto our beam but unfortunately dropped its intensity at the same time to under 8 knots. We are currently sailing along at around 5.5 knots, with the main and the staysail deployed, the swell has died away to less than a meter, the sun is struggling to show its face, there are clouds ahead of us and yet again we are cold. I really don't know what is up with this temperature but I don't like it! We have made the decision to continue on our original course and head straight to Brisbane, we think we should just avoid the pred
icted (?!) high winds as long as we get a decent run today and early tomorrow so fingers crossed.