13th October

26 18.073 S
156 00.246 E

Weather; overcast then sunny, wind 4 - 12 knots, waves 2 meters

There's really not a lot to say about the last 24 hours as things were pretty similar to the previous day.
The wind was yet again noticeably missing in action for a good part of the day which meant that we had to run the engine and in fact ran it for the entire 24 hours. Having said that though we changed our clocks during this period, putting them 2 hours back to be in line with Brisbane time (we hope!) so we did actually have 2 hours without the engine running. Our speed was slow, making an average of 4.5 knots, the swell was negligible so it was quite comfortable for most of the time. We saw no ships, no signs of life in the sky or in the water once again. Our day was spent reading and staring at the horizon after writing a few messages to our companion sailors - one of whom should be reaching their destination of Southport today whilst the other two will be a day and two days behind us arriving if things continue as they have been, these are the two boats that took the northern route. as things stand at the moment we should reach Rivergate Marina on the 14th , late in the afternoon but with the winds that we are currently (not) getting it might just push out to the 15th. Our night sail was also uneventful and we both managed to get a good few hours' sleep in. Today has started out with a very early dawn, making us wonder if we actually have altered the clock to far back, possibly due to daylight saving hours, I'm sure it will all become clear when we get to the marina. We had a huge line of black cloud surrounding us at dawn and we expected to get wet but it just moved past us without dropping its load and the sun followed it and gradually the cloud evaporated leaving us with a sunny sky and a few fluffy clouds. The wind has clocked around slightly and is trying to fill our sails and failing miserably, so we are still motor sailing for now. the forecast is for a decent blow on the beam - if only that were what we are getting! We have spent the early part of the morning finishing up the odd bits of food stuff, we have no eggs, no bacon, no hash browns, no more brownie mix, next to no oil etc left. I think we will be able to take the last bits out of the freezer today as they will make up lunch and tonight's dinner so we will be able to turn the freezer off and save a bit of power that way. Gerry has been in touch with the guys who can apparently fix our hydraulic boom vang leak so that is in hand, we just have to keep it going for another day or so and mop up the leak on a regular basis. So far we haven't put the second pulley system into action but it is ready, just in case we need it.
Our total mileage was 135NM (but that covers 26 hours) and as I have already said we ran the engine for 24 of those hours. The wind is supposed to increase significantly in the next 24 hours so I might have to leave tomorrows update until we reach the calm of the Brisbane river.