The weather is cooling for the first time in a year and a half. Our new fangu danguled weather station brother Jim presented Volare says it's 24.6 indoors and 23.8 outdoors. Yesterday it was 29.5 outdoors and 28.4 indoors, so temperature is changing quickly now.

Yesterday we were heading for New Caledonia at one stage through the day and Lord Howe Island at another time of the day. That's head to wind sailing for you. On all or previous passages we've been down wind (wind behind us for the non sailors) and have been able to keep on our rhumb line a lot easier than this trip. Now we are sailing about 30 - 40 degrees to starboard of our course. At least we're sailing again, for a while through the night the wind died and we had to motor and Greg and I said to each other, we haven't got enough fuel to have to keep motoring. We have a lovely 15 knots of wind now and Volare is getting along nicely at 6.5 - 7 knots. She has a great motion and is very comfortable.

Yesterday, the wind had died more and I got busy baking 2 loaves of banana bread as the bananas we had bought had ripened quicker than we could eat them. Then for dinner I cooked one of his favourite dinners from his childhood, a corned beef dinner with all the veggies. A great meal at sea, as you can eat the corned beef cold for a few days.

The night has been an easy one, all our watches have worked well in 3 hour slots and for once Captain Greg has had a good sleep - great for him for the second night out. Our last passage from Tonga to Fiji, Greg really didn't sleep at all. So he's a much nicer Captain when he can get sleep in.

We have 350 miles to go now to our first waypoint, about 600 miles offthe north tip of New Zealand and depending on the wind speed and direction it will take anywhere between 3 to 6 days. We hope to be in New Zealand around the 18th October, give or take.