[password]bulletYIT
[position] 22 40.9 S 176 15.1 W
[weather] 18 knots from 355' cloudy, warm, no rain
[heading] 045
[speed] 5.5
[status] Day 8 - 110 nm to Tonga. We motor sailed with about 7 knots of north east wind and cooked up more tuna on the BBQ and had it on rice with a light salad. Very tasty indeed. The music was on in the cockpit as we tried to hold a northerly course with NE wind while we studied predict wind and considered our options. Ultimately we do what they say and see they are right. The forecast was for building northerly winds going more NW and getting up to 18 knots. At about 1500 hrs the wind built enough that we could turn the engine off. A welcome move as it had been burbling away reassuringly for the last 24 hrs. With the wind building from the north we struck a north westerly course with it in mind the wind would swing NW and allow us to lay through to Tonga. A lot of the afternoon was spent discussing this and the right time to tack to our advantage. A couple of times we tacked only having to tack back again after the wind shifted unfavourably. This situation created a new na
utical term that we now have at our disposal. 'Premature tackulation' is an unfortunate situation where one tacks too early not having waited at least ten minutes to make sure a wind shift is permanent. It results in one having to tack back and try the manoeuvre again at a later time consciously avoiding premature tackulation. We got it right the second time. Anyway enough about that... By sunset the wind was up to 14 gusting 18 and we had a reef in the main and a couple of rolls on the headsail. Revilo with Ray (marine) at the helm, was punching her way upwind at about 6 knots while we chomped our way through a tasty chicken laksa. The wind built through the night up to 20 knots at times and this made for some slight slamming over waves at times and less sleep than usual. A bumpy ride and less sleepy on watch. We had our third ship pass in the night 3nm behind us. He was doing 18 knots, 200m length, 30m beam and 9 m draft. Sounds expensive to maintain...
Day break brought a moderate sea on our nose. As we approached a 25m underwater seamount Craig thought chances of catching a big fish were very high so put out a lure. As we sat in the cockpit to eat our weetbix with muesli topping I pointed the lure behind out to Perryn who had just arisen from his daily beauty sleep. As we looked back at the lure there was a massive strike with the line snapping tight and a big splash of white water. We again lurched to action stations turning off the radio and closing the windows in the cockpit to keep the blood out. Craig ended up pulling in the biggest yellow fin tuna he'd ever caught. It was about 1.2m long and we reckon would have weighed 20 kgs. It was despatched of and processed down to cookable chunks over the next hour and a half with the motor on and us pitching our way up wind. No humans were harmed in the processing of this animal. Currently we are working our way upwind at 5.5 knots with Ata island 21 nm away at a bearing of 9.
6 deg true. A pleasant day with some tropical stickiness, cloud with sun shining through and some blue patches. We have just got out our roast pork gravy sandwiches lunch and Moroccan lamb for dinner which Perryn is uber excited about. From what we understand he is partial to either Morocco, lamb or both.[END]