[password] pilot25041
[position] 24 12.18s 147 15.86w
[status] Tuesday morning and another beautiful sunrise ......... How do I know? Because we were up early to meet the "breadman" at 7am and collect our pre-ordered French Sticks ...... the first one didn't last long once it had fried eggs deposited down its middle!

Next we downloaded the latest 'grib' files to help us decide on our next course of action on this great adventure, over a "brew" we pondered what to do, you can't beat a good cup of tea for a good ponder! The wind is virtually zero for a couple of days, however, if we take the pain now of motoring for 24-36hrs then the wind will fill in and help us on our journey to Rapa, additionally, a high pressure system is developing and moving SE that should then give us good S-E wind from the weekend on to help us get back to Tubuai our last planned stop before meeting our ladies in Papeete!

After the ponder we went back ashore to book out with the gendarmes and stock up on supplies etc, the shopkeeper also gave us a huge bunch of small sweet bananas for free. Steven stayed on board and got a visit from the local shark, which Andrew managed to capture on video cam when he returned to deliver the frozen stuff from our excursion ashore.

This island is absolutely beautiful, the 'locals' are extremely friendly and helpful, and it seems to help that the whole place is totally uncommercialised! We hope that Rapa is of similar vein.

10.30 we ran up the port engine, pulled up our anchor and set off out through the reef, we saw Pzazz & Taranui inside the reef making their way back to whence we had come, as we rounded the NE of the island reef, we could see Tuna jumping in the water about 2 hundred metres ahead, but despite having our trolling lines deployed failed to get any 'bites'!

The bonus of motoring is that our half bank of house batteries are now fully charged and the water maker has filled our tanks.

Today's boat snag .......... the auto pilot is not working ......... it obviously thinks it is still due a longer rest after the 14days hard slog from Auckland ........ initial invest indicates the hydraulic pump electric motor has failed, we will investigate further once we get to Rapa!

We are all having a great time and currently seeing the most amazing sunset, the sky is a vivid red and the sea around the whole boat has turned pink! Not really trying to make our shore-based followers jealous!!

Position 15.00 nzst. DTG 255nm.
[speed] 5.8kts
[heading] 125T
[weather] wind negligible, flat swell, 50% cloud cover.

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