Sunday 30th September

At Sea

20 48.349 S
171 19.098 E (at Midnight)

The night sail remained fast and we were quite excited by the speeds we were reaching however as dawn approached the sky became cloudy and grey, the sun rose behind the clouds and remained out of sight until about 10.00hrs. We spent the morning fiddling with sails as the wind gradually dropped and along with it our speed, though we were still doing a respectable 7 knots. Once the sun was out it turned into a pleasant day and we again put the fishing line in the water to see if we could catch dinner (we didn’t). By 15.00hrs the sun vanished behind an ever darkening sky, the sea swell increased and we began to roll around with each successive wave – not so pleasant now! As we began our night watches Gerry muttered that maybe we should reef the main down to the 2nd reefing point, after a short discussion we did this – in the pitch black as the moon was a no show tonight. With the main now reefed right down and just half the jib in play we still hurtled along at 7+ knots. The wind continued top build and was reaching 25 knots before midnight; we were glad that we had put the second reef in. Again when I did the midnight stats we were surprised to find that we had covered 172 nautical miles in the 24 hrs – we were more than pleased with this. At the present rate we should be anchored in Noumea by the 3rd –Yippee!