Rotuma to Tuvalu Posted from Majuro Dec 23, 2106 (THIS ONE SHOULD BE BEFORE THE ONE I JUST SENT - MY FAULT THIS TIME) Position 8 56.91s 17178 59.56e Nov 6, 2015, (Posted from Majuro Aug 2016) Ahead the ocean was completely empty. Behind me the hills of Rotuma were growing smaller by the hour. Probably the last hills I'd see for five months. We were bound for Tuvalu 260 miles north, 65 hours sailing at four or five knots boat speed. The sea was pretty tame, a deep royal blue half metre swell, with a light chop on the surface. Two fishing lines trailed behind us in David's endless quest for that elusive tuna. Back in Rotuma we had a salutary lesson on eating the 'safe fish' up here. Many South Pacific reef fish carry the disease ciguatera. If you eat this fish you may get ill with flu-like symptoms that can be quite severe and sometimes last for several months and there is no cure. Sylvan off the French boat, and Tim off Exodus came back from spearfishing two days ago with a huge barracuda, a red snapper and a trevally. We asked Kailopa if any of the fish were not safe to eat and he said the snapper could be poisonous. We heard the French ate the snapper anyway. I saw Sylvan at the wharf just before we left and he didn't look so well. Gilles' philosophy, "You must try things. Sometimes good. Sometimes not so good." He gave a French shrug. *** November 7, 0130 My watch. I'd woken hot, sweaty, and itchy. I quickly gathered up my things vacating the bunk for David. Dropping my watch bag on the deck I sat in the cockpit while he briefed me. The main thing he told me was to avoid accidentally going about, definitely a risk with the auto-helm which holds the course set regardless of wind direction. If it backed a little more we'd go about. The mechanical wind vane, on the other hand, holds the boat at a constant angle to the wind. When the wind shifts the boat moves with it. But these winds were too light for that instrument. David went below to collapse into his bunk for six hours shut eye. For a moment I envied him. I glanced at the sail and saw it was nearly flat. We were hard on the wind. I checked the horizon for ships (in the whole 1500 miles to Majuro I think we only saw one). More importantly there was no sign of any squalls. Squalls meant rain, good. But often they came with sudden wind shifts and large increases in speed, bad. Then I have to act very quickly and adjust the sails. I'm not very confident at that and occasionally have to wake David to help. I really hate disturbing his precious sleep. *** To pass the time I made a meal out of the last dregs of fresh produce on board. A piece of slightly soft cucumber, sprouts, a little brown on the ends, tinned corn and my new best friend, red onions. They last for ages without refrigeration and bring life to any kind of salad. I finished my snack off with brownie from the freezer and a banana. Some of you sailors may gasp at this terrible risk we take. We sailors have a number of superstitions. Carrying bananas on passage is supposedly bad luck. I guess if you carry them for long enough some bad luck may occur, says David, but we've got this far safely with them on board. We have some ocean sailing friends, normally sane-minded people, who will absolutely not carry bananas at sea, nor leave port on a Friday, another nautical superstition. One that has come down through David's step-father, a naval man, is no whistling at sea or you risk a dramatic jump in wind speed. I've tried whistling when becalmed in the ocean and it doesn't work. Replete, I settled into the cockpit. Blast, the wind started faltering and coming more from the east. At the beginning of my watch it was a pleasant 18 knots, propelling us along at 4-5 knots. The boat was much harder to sail in the light fluky winds. I whistled for a few minutes, to no avail. *** 1830 Sitting in the cockpit watching an ocean sunset I was feeling pretty intrepid. Only about 15 yachts each year take the northern option, sailing up to Majuro for the hurricane season. The weather conditions are so different in the area north of Fiji compared to between New Zealand and Fiji and Tonga requiring us to learn a new set of rules. And there is no real shelter to be had. We were still in the hurricane zone, we needed to be north of 5 degrees south but we were still at 11 degrees. We had to keep going. We hoped to arrive in Tuvalu the next day but knew we may need to heave to overnight in order to go through the pass in daylight. David talked to Exodus on the radio. They were way back in the dark cloud behind us. It was nice to hear a familiar voice. (I know, we'd only known them for a week but that's a lot of history around here). They reported that Sylvan, from the French boat was taken by ambulance to hospital with severe dehydration. From ciguatera we suspected. *** Sunday Nov 8 Cumulus clouds towered all around the horizon, fortunately none bearing down on us. We were a happy ship for a while. Kailopa was grating all our coconuts into thick sweet cream. If we caught that bloody tuna I would make ceviche. The sun was out and the breeze gentle. Too gentle alas. We commissioned the iron sail and resigned ourselves to motoring all day in order to get us to Funafuti, the main island of Tuvalu, before dark. We had goat curry from the freezer for lunch. Excellent. But the night before wasn't so excellent. I got five hours sleep in a row, superb, but came up on deck to really changeable conditions. A squall hit with 33 knot of winds and I had to get David up to help me reef. On the plus side we had heavy rain and I collected two bucketsful. The wind jumped around in speed, 22 knots, 8 knots, 20, and direction eventually settling in from the north-east. I accidentally went about. In my attempts to get back on course I lost all sense of direction. I didn't know which way to turn the boat nor what to do with the sails. When David came on deck to see what was going on we were heading back the way we'd come. He started the engine and got us back on course. I could have done that! Just would have taken me a while to figure it out. Alas when the GPS is on there is no hiding tactical errors, my delinquent path showed up on the electronic track that followed us across the screen.