[password] beeskiff
[position] 22 50.035s 163 33.400e
[status] It was a perfect night of sailing on nice reaching angle of about 100 TWA and wind around 13 knots apart from one scary incident. As Lyn was waking me up at 4am for my watch the autopilot lost it and started beeping, which happens sometimes and is no problem, but this time it was saying ?rudder failure?! The boat tacked into a hove to position on stbd tack. We put on the wheel, started the motor and hand steered back onto port tack, steering was okay but then it seemed to fail and we tacked back onto stbd. I think this was just me being disoriented and steering badly, but we thought there was something broken in the steering. After checking linkages and that rudders we?re still on ? all seemed okay and we have now resumed business as usual, with some relief!
We have already seen three ships, including one that altered course for us to avoid collision. This is remarkable only because we hardly ever see ships on our crossings except close to Australia.
[speed] 7.5 knots
[heading] 240T
[weather] 13 knots SSE, 1.5m swell from the SW. 50% cloud cover.

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