[password] pilot25041
[position] 27 02.4s 144 46.7w
[status] after the fun of sailing under gennaker yesterday, we dropped this big sail an hour before dark and were under full main & genoa set up for the night, initially the wind was too far aft for us to make really good progress hence only making good 67nm over the 12 'dark' hours. As dawn broke, not as spectacular today as some of the recent ones ...... but still very pretty, we had 85nm to go to Rapa, we now had 15kts of wind from directly behind and unless the wind started to move we wouldn't make Rapa before nightfall. The boat was again corkscrewing down the waves/swell making sleeping and moving around the boat difficult.

Big rain clouds had been gathering off our Stbd rear quarter from first light and were gradually moving towards us, we started to sail lower and slower to try and let these clouds, carried on 16-20kt winds overtake us, without us having to reduce sail. Around 7.15 we caught the back end of these clouds, with light rain, the wind increased to 25kts and the sea became flat, we started to steer back to our best course for Rapa ........ our speed increased topping out at 11.1kts!! As we came out the other side, the wind angle was 30 degrees to the better and since then we have been consistently making 8-9.5kts, the seas have built, but the boat is going very well.

"Land ahoy" ...... At 13.45 we spotted Rapa on the horizon some 17nm away, although we have about 25nm to go to the harbour entrance on the eastern side, we are hopeful that we will make it with enough light to get inside tonight, but it will be tight!

Crew are all as well as can be expected under the circumstances, we've only been 'sailing' the boat ........ not fixing or breaking anything on the boat for 24hrs, a quiet night at anchor will certainly help us and the boat recuperate!
Position 10.00 nzst. 149nm run in 24hrs, DTG 34nm.
[speed] 9.1kts
[heading] 125T
[weather] 25knts SW, 1.5m swell from the SW, 30% cloud cover.

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