[Password] brucelaura
[Position] 19 55.1S 54 31.4E
[Status] Sunday, August 25, 10:00 pm. We've been on passage 12 hours and have put 77 miles between Neptunes Highway and Reunion. We motored into a light wind and 3-4 meter swell for the first 3 hours to get away from Reunions wind shadow. Then it was like someone flipped a switch and we had 17 knots on our stand quarter. So we are sailing down wind and averaging better than 7 knots. Our friends on Slow Flight gained about 5 miles on us. We were contacted by Reunion Coast Guard that a 10 meter sailboat was having problems (with their sails????) and had run out of fuel about 60 miles out. Miraculously, our friends on Slow Flight spotted a sailboat just before sunset and changed course to investigate. It was the distressed boat! We rolled up our jib and chicken-jibed to follow them. By the time we were closing in, Kimi and Trevor on Slow Flight had somehow managed to give the stranded sailor a 5 gallon jug of diesel. That will at least get him close enough to Reunion for the Co
ast
Guard to assist, if not all the way. So we chicken-jibed back to course, decided we needed to set the pole, and are continuing on wing and wing. A very busy first day leaving the dock, getting everything stowed away and ship-shape, getting sails up, gybing twice, setting the pole, and many chats on the radio with the Coast Guard. Tomorrow should be more routine.

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