[position]25 04.122S 168 39.235E
[speed]7k
[heading]355t
[status]You know the song "Oh what a night"..... well that describes last night for us. We had a good day's sail yesterday and covered a lot of ground, but by sunset the sky was an ominous black and the swell had picked up, and yikes, the radar was showing an awful number of squalls around! Just as well we had bangers and mash for dinner - provided you stuck your banger in the mash it wasn't tempted to fly off your plate!! The boys did an AWESOME job keeping Kiapa trucking along safely, hand steering through gusty squall after gusty squall. Around 3am the wind switched to "on the nose" for the direction we are heading towards, so we made the decision - a first ever for us on Kiapa - to 'heave to' for a couple of hours which meant we all got some shut eye. And now it's daybreak and we can see again, always so much nicer! 145nm to Ile de Pins.
[weather]15-18k W. Swell 1-2m confused washing machine 40% cloud cover.
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