[password] Savanna54
[position] 20 36.465s 170 35.800e
[status] Good morning. We had a pretty consistent night of motorsailing at 5.5kn with the screacher up. Light wind and not too bumpy. Hardly touched the sail, and nothing changed from sun down to sun up. Easy peasy.

This meant a good night sleep. We slept in the bed last night, which was really comfy compared to the prev nights curled up on the settee when off watch.

Wind is at a tempting speed to put up the Spinnaker again.. sometimes above 10, then (like right now) it dips to 9kn.

We need to average 5kn to time the pass and passage thru reef and islands on Saturday morning.

We had a friendly visitor in the night. A big gannet or booby spent hours flying around the boat, trying to land. Persistence paid off, and he spent the night on top of the wind generator, holding on tight as it swings around in the wind/waves.

We took some pics in the dark, with flash, which confirmed it as a red footed booby. He's not afraid at all - Kirstine was able to get right up close for some great photos. I reckon he's never seen a human before. Cool to share his open ocean environment.

Looking ahead, we're using weather routing and are sticking a bit north of the rum line to stay in this little bit of wind. We'll head a bit further south of our course to get south of the rum line tomorrow.

By lunch the we should be near a shallower patch of water for the afternoon. Some 1000m patches and two 40m peaks /volcanoes. The chart says 'volcan sous-marin reported 1996'. Perhaps a chance for some fish.

We'd love some fresh fish, but still have plenty fresh and frozen food, which we may lose to biosecurity when we get to Noumea.. seems they are quite strict on some meat and stuff.

Time for a coffee, and to see what today will bring..

[speed] 5.5kn
[heading] 240M
[weather] 10kn ESE, 1m SE swell, 80% cloud, 1020mb

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