[password] Savanna54
[position] 32 50.270s 170 45.100e
[status] Good morning, how's Sunday going?

All good here. Bit of a mixed bag last night. Rain and wind built up to it's peak for Kirstines 11-1am watch. I got woken up by the noise (always sleeping with one ear open ;-) - driving rain and 32kn of wind that had shifted about 45 degrees. The tarpaulin helped, but i think Kirstine got the worst of it and got a bit of a soaking. Times like that certainly make you appreciate a warm dry bed!

Barry got lucky with that one, just wrapping up his watch before it got nasty.

By the time I came on at 1pm, the stars where breaking out, and the last nasty black cloud was blowing away to the east, and the wind had eased to 12kn.

The remains of the gusty, shifty wind we're still evident in the sea state, so with light wind from behind and the genoa not doing much as we wobbled around, it was sails down, engine on, get on course and into easy watches and good sleep till the morning.

I asked Kirstine to wake me up half an hour earlier so we could assess the conditions in daylight and get some sail up. Thought we'd go Spinnaker, but have ended up with main and genoa, and autopilot set to wind mode (106°), doing about 6kn. Course is still west of rum line, by choice, and taking us towards Three Kings Islands and beyond to Kaitaia.

Most calculations see us getting to the entrance of Bay of Islands (220nm away) at night, unless we really speed up, or slow down. Then it's still around 15Nm into Opua.

See how we go. We've told customs we're coming to Opua, and have emailed our "advance notice of arrival" form to them.

Another option might be to press on to Marsden Cove, Whangerei for the morning. Like Opua, Marsden is also a clearance port. We'll see when we get closer and hopefully get cell coverage and call customs when within range. All speculation at this stage.. depends on the wind!

I thought I saw a school of dolphins just now, and popped down to see if anybody was stirring to come see. Came back up and nothing. We're they ever there at all? Perhaps time for another coffee.

Barry has just appeared, diligently as ever well before his watch. In his overalls, it looks like he's just stepped out of the workshop :)

Looking at our course and the wind, I think we might go back to the Spinnaker for awhile.

All going well, we should have land in sight tomorrow morning.

All well on board. Time for that coffee and a strict eating program to get through the good stuff before we arrive. :)

[speed] 6kn
[heading] 130M
[weather] 15kn W, 1m N swell, 40% cloud, 1015mb dropping

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