Monday 15th October

At Sea

22 24.516 S
162 02.462 E (at Midnight)

The night sailing turned out to be the sort that we both hate – there was only the smallest sliver of a new moon which only stayed in the sky for a couple of hours, the stars were mostly hidden by the clouds and it was pitch black, making the horizon difficult to see. The up side was that there were no other boats anywhere for the entire night. The wind gusted up to 25 knots on and off all night, the swell was 6-8 foot and caused waves to slap against the hull, the pitching and rolling was not necessarily the worst we have experienced but we could have happily lived without it. As dawn approached (very early I might add at 04.30hrs) the winds began to die away and by 07.00hrs they were down to 10 knots and we shook the 2nd reef out of the main to keep us moving along. The forecast said that the wind would be light (5 knots) and variable for the day – it was certainly variable but at 10 -15 knots, which was fine as it meant we could do at least 6-7 knots all day. Our day was unexceptional, we saw no boats, no whales, no dolphins, in fact nothing at all. I didn’t even bother to put the fishing line in the water as we have enough food for the entire trip, with some left over I’m sure. We took turns in catching up with sleep, being on watch and reading. As the night closed in around us we were surprised at how cold it was, we both had tee shirts, track suits and fleecy jackets on to keep warm and even then we were complaining of cold! The stars were out in force tonight and the sliver of moon put in a brief appearance – it would be so nice to have a full moon sail so that we could see around us.