12th October

25 41.635 S

158 24. 609 E



Weather; overcast then sunny, wind 4 - 12 knots, waves 1 meter



The cloudy overcast sky that we began the day with gradually improved over the course of the morning and by lunchtime it was a glorious sunny day once again. The swell remained light and of no great concern which made a pleasant change. The wind was noticeably absent so we motor sailed for almost all of the day averaging around 5 knots.

There was nothing to see and very little to occupy ourselves with so we read, ate and slept on a repeat cycle.

By mid-afternoon there was apparently still not going to be any wind to speak of so the decision was made to put the spinnaker pole away, oh joy! At least this went without mishap and I don't mind so much the putting away as it doesn't involve much, if any, winching. With the spinnaker pole safely tucked away it was time to try flying the Yankee and the stay sail out on the same side as the main to see if we could put some wind into the equation, there was little of it about so it was a doubtful move but if your name is Gerry you have to try these things. Whilst we didn't get much lift from them at least they weren't collapsing on us, probably due to the fact that we were making our own wind with the engine running! We continued to motor sail like this for the entirety of remaining day and all through the night. We are still having an issue with the hydraulic boom vang panel which is leaking hydraulic oil almost a s fast as we can top it up which is a big concern and needs
sorting out sooner rather than later, if only those new seals had arrived into Fiji before we had left! Gerry is getting quite worried about it and has come up with a cunning plan (so cunning that he can pin a tail on it and call it a weasel Ð for those Black Adder fans, sorry to those who have no idea what I'm talking about!) anyway the plan is how we can deal with not having an operational boom vang for the remainder of the trip. Gerry got out a couple of blocks and a very long length of spare line and proceeded to make up a spare pulley, the idea being that he disconnects the boom vang from the boom and attaches the said pulley in its place and uses a winch to tighten down or release the boom as necessary Ð what could possibly go wrong???? For the moment though the spare pulley is stashed away in the lazarette and hopefully won't see the light of day but it's there ready and waiting, just in case. The night motor sail was pretty much the same as the day, nothing much happ
ening. I saw one Asian fishing boat at around 3am but it was a good distance away from us and didn't even show up on AIS. I was also entertained by a couple of Asian fishermen having a long conversation on the radio using the hailing channel which was a little irritating, it was a good job no one needed to use the radio hailing station for an emergency! Apart from that the night was boringly quiet with nothing to report. Again it got cold at around 4 am, I think we are growing more wimpy or thinner blooded as the years go by, who gets cold in the tropics??? Today began with a light cloud cover which is slowly being burnt off, the sea remains fairly flat and innocuous, there is no sign of anything living either on or in the water or the sky. We are continuing to motor sail with all three sails deployed and doing about 5.3 knots. In 24 hours we covered a further 129 NM and ran the engine for 22 hours. We are slowly eating our way through all of the prepped meals and should arr
ive with hardly anything in the fridge to hand over to bio security. We have managed to have enough chocolate to see us home by some miracle and careful portion control. I am so looking forward to a roast dinner once we arrive though, it will make a change from food that can be eaten out of a bowl and with a spoon!