[password] Tsar12
[position]13 52.95S 169 36.16W
[weather] grey skies with some bright periods rain cells passing through Sea 3-4M wind 20-33 knots
[status] yesterday we had 2-3 m seas with winds from SE at 18-23 knots. PredictWind had forecast winds increasing slightly to a max of 25 during the night and easing after that so we sailed the day with full main and jib not quite able to utilise the sea angle as well as would have liked but it was backing slowly to more on our quarter. After 12 hours sailing we caught the other 2 yachts that had left Suwarrow also bound for Apia when they left 10 hours earlier. We radioed up Nick from Urchin the Elan 38 and had a chat.
Late in the afternoon we put a reef in in preparation for the evening thinking a max of 25 knots at 130 degrees is fine however into the evening we got hit by rain cells - some of which had a small amount of rain others more- some reducing the wind most increasing it . As we got into more into the night the seas had become 3-4m and we were getting sustained 33 knots wind with us surfing down waves at sustained bursts of 15+ and hitting a max of 17.6- averaging over 10 - all quite exciting in the dark !!
Even though P?zazz loves those conditions we put a deep reef in to get the speed down to a a more sedate 8 knots with bursts to 12.It was good when dawn broke and a nice cooked breakfast was heartily appreciated !
Despite having throttled back we did over 200 nm in 24 hours.
We are now 137 nm from Apia so have furled jib to slow us down and prevent us getting there in the dark tomorrow morning.
Conditions have moderated today but still a reasonable sea running.
Look forward to hopefully being in a marina berth for the first time this trip tomorrow morning.

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