Tuesday 2nd October

At Sea

22 21.614 S
166 38.002 E (at Midnight)

Through the rest of the night the wind remained the same and we struggled to maintain forward motion at times. By 07.00hrs we had had enough and we started up the engine, put it at low revs and began to motor sail. The jib remained away and the preventer remained on as the wind was now coming around to our aft. We put the fishing line in the water, buoyed by yesterday’s catch (it was pointless though as we didn’t get a single bite all day). We took turns to catch up with some of our lost sleep during the day and read in the cockpit for the rest of the day. The sun did a little better today and managed to show its face a few times but by 15.00hrs it had turned quite cold and we were wearing fleecy tops. Gerry said he could see land at 15.00hrs, I think his imagination was in play as it was still 40 miles away. By 17.30hrs we were close to the entrance to the reef which runs along the side of the island, we turned into wind and put the main away then returned back to our course and motored to the entrance of the reef, the sun was setting over the land as we negotiated our way through the reef entrance and made a pretty backdrop.
Our destination, Noumea, was still 50 miles away from this point and we continued to motor through the night doing a sedate 4.7 knots. We had hoped to arrive at the harbour in Noumea during daylight hours but this obviously wasn’t going to be the case now – it would be another dodge the boat at anchor scenario when we arrived.