I am hoping that today is much like yesterday. Could not have asked for a better day. The wind was perfect at 16-20 knots from astern on the quarter, the seas were low and the sun shined the whole day. The only thing missing was a fish. Well I guess you canÂ't have everything. For about 8 hours we probably averaged 8 knots over ground.

We are still about 180 miles from Savusavu where we will check into Fiji. It is really early Wednesday our time so we will be sailing into port about mid morning on Thursday the 22nd. Except for one 36 hour period it has been a very pleasant sail from New Zealand to Fiji. The day and a half adrift and the day and a half heave too in the gale forced our decision to bypass Minerva Reefs. But then the reefs were quite busy with some 30 boats parked in the North lagoon.

We are sliding a little West of our rhum as the wind has a greater South component than a West component and is supposed to hold there throughout today. Will probably gybe at daylight and slip past some smaller islands before gybing back NW into Savusavu bay. The wind is also supposed to back off some to the 10-15 categories so we may end up doing some motor sailing. If that happens it will give me some time to empty my other bladder into the fuel tanks so I can put them both away before arrival. We motored the first two days and I moved the fuel from one bladder over to the port tank and other than a little motoring during the gale havenÂ't used them since.

Sorry for no pictures but an ocean is an ocean and when we get into port and have some wideband we will post some and maybe even a small video.

Cheers to all!

John