[password] Tsar12
[position] 31 02.06 E 165 22.73 W
[weather] S 20-25 knots 3 M swells with chop - building . Sky bit of sun and high cloud but intermittent rain squalls
[status] good sailing yesterday but then wind built before dark so put a reef in and settled in for a bumpy night in 20-25 knots S holding a course of 90T to keep our East gains .we are now into the effects of the front below us and looking like we will have wind in this range until just before Raivavae- would be nice to think it will follow us around and allow us to free off but in fact it may harden up to SE on our approach so we need all the East we can get before starting to ease north.
Last night we had Surreal 2 below and ahead of us by 4 nm and Taranoui somewhere about 10nm to the North. This morn8ng Surreal is just over 1 nm away and Taranoui prob now
3nm to the north. It is amazing that after 1000nm and a week of sailing we have 3 Cats from NZ within a 5 nm radius - this is like the Volvo ! Lol
E managed a temporary aerial which has fixed part of the problem with our AIS and we can now pick up boats and presumably they can us which with this close proximity at night is v useful! Must be a problem with our VHF aerial as we have had no readings from it since the Hauraki Gulf.
E are now just over half way to our destination tho it seems longer than that - mainly because of the light winds or tight slower ales we have had to take - not once have we had SW or W !
All good aboard - everyone is in good spirits.
Note: Sending a brief description of the weather you are experiencing is a great help to David and Patricia (Gulf Harbour Radio) for monitoring the weather.

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