Minerva Reef Outbound Day 4

Hi everyone,

At noon today we were at 28 54S 177 56E steering 190M, motoring at 5 knots.  The wind was 5G8 from the E.  Our noon to noon distances were 107nm by the log and 124nm over the ground.   Overall we'd logged 346nm and 375nm respectively.  Our distance to go was 432nm.  Nearly half way there, and just a Freo to Albany to go.

Dawn this morning

We've been motoring on and off for the last 24 hours.  We had a good sail yesterday evening when a cloud line passed overhead giving us 20 knots of SE wind.  Before the cloud the wind had been very light W and afterwards it became light again but from the SSE.  This morning we sailed for 90 minutes in a nice 8G12 SE wind until we got into the lee of a big raincloud.  Happily we seem to have dodged that one.

The screenshot below is from NoForeignLand.  It shows the number of boats streaming towards NZ.  New Caledonia is at top-left and southern Tonga at top-right.  We're in the area where the boats from Fiji and Tonga are merging.

NFL boats on passage towards NZ

And here's today's version of the PredictWind GPS tracking page.  We're all making pretty good progress.  Like us I expect everyone is looking forward to escaping the blue hole.

We're expecting some wet and windy weather when we initially find the ESE winds ahead.  Can't wait to have some good wind which should take us all the way to Opua.  Hopefully it won't rain all the way!

Trust all's well where you are.