Nuku'alofa and on to New Zealand.

David even managed to catch two Tuna en route!

Once we arrived in Nuku'alofa, we tied Puddytat up in the small boat harbour, med moored to the breakwater, David climbed into the dinghy and went ashore to clear us in, and to tell them that we were here to apply for the NZ visa and that we'd be leaving soon.

One of the fish we caught.

Brilliant sunset and great sailing weather! for a change.

We found the NZ immigration office and filled in forms, got photo's taken and finally they said all was in order but they had to send it to NZ for processing. We should wait for an email. This was a Friday. On Tuesday I walked into town to an internet cafe and checked my emails...oh oh I saw that the immigration dept. had sent me an email on Friday afternoon requesting that I please come in, they needed some more paperwork to be filled in. We went around straight away and filled them in. Two working days wasted! :-( They were really nice people and they promised that they'd push it through as fast as they could. I checked my emails every day... On the following Friday we were still waiting so we planned on some sightseeing and decided to check my emails first, nothing.. sigh... I dropped them a line enquiring on the progress of it all and lo and behold a few minutes later I had a reply... Come in later today and collect your passport, the visa was approved! YAY! I went in straight away and asked what time I could collect it as we still had to clear out of Tonga, they said between 12 and 1 p.m.. Needless to say I was not late, I sat and waited patiently. After a few last minute questions I was called in to collect my Passport. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Main street with the huge rain tree on the left, near the post office.

Under  the Rain Tree.

This mat skirt is worn by men and women. This one is elaborate though.

Young Ladies.

School uniforms.

A local sight seeing boat..

The Kings Palace.. garden needs work.

We caught a bus and went to see the flying foxes... they're about 12 inches long. 

Tau'olunga Komipiuta. Fast Internet $1 for 15 mins.
On Salote Rd before Tupoulahi  Rd. Almost at the T of Fasi-moe-afi Rd.

Inside the place.

Ros and David paying for their internet usage.

The Owner. Always with a smile.

During the week my Parents on Kudana had passed by Nuku'alofa, we'd chatted on the VHF when they'd been in range and since then they'd been waiting for us at Minerva reef North. On the Wednesday they decided not to wait for us and to head on out to NZ.

Ros, getting some air and a lot of water.. ha ha the rogue
waves keep breaking over her, she's soaked!

Later on Wednesday when we got back from town, Evi, our friend on the boat next door, told us that they'd heard from my Dad and the news wasn't good. She said they'd hit Minerva reef south. Landed right on top of it at the top of the tide and were stuck there. This was a disaster! How were they, how badly was the boat damaged, were they taking on water? These thoughts tumbled from my mouth at top speed. Evi said they were okay, just shook up, one rudder was badly bent and as yet they were still dry. The plan, she said was to wait for high tide and try and motor off the reef. Now I haven't seen Minerva reef south, but if it's like the North reef it would be wide and flat. I wondered how far in they had landed, if they'd make it off without damaging the boat further. Next morning the news wasn't good. The keels were both destroyed so there wouldn't be much in the way of steerage from them. They'd slide sideways and lose direction whilst sailing. During the night the waves had constantly smashed them and this had caused the keels to deteriorate even more. BUT they'd managed to get off. It had further cost them both the props and half the remaining rudder. Heck, so now they had hardly any steering, no keels, no props, so the engines could only be used to charge the batteries and nothing else, AND they were taking on water! Apparently one of the engines had dislodged it's seal and the water was coming in there. David and I had made sure to fit the yacht out with extra powerful pumps and thank goodness we had because now the boat remained dry and the pump on that side worked like a charm.
They'd decided to carry on towards New Zealand 800 nautical miles away. They asked us to follow them as soon as possible.
As you know I had to wait for my passport. Nothing we could do about it, so we filled in the time as best we could.

Once I got my passport back and cleared out with customs and immigration, we spent a quick Saturday morning shopping for fresh fruit and veg, also filling up with fuel and water. At 11am we left the fuel dock did a motor-by Evi and some other yachts and headed on out towards NZ and Minerva Reef.

Sunset.

When we were getting near to Minerva North reef, our initial plan was to stop there, as there was really bad weather forecast and we didn't want to chance it, and clean our hull, but we had 30 knot winds and 15 ft seas. David was hesitant to attempt the entrance into a reef we'd never visited before and it was directly downwind, so he decided we'd pass it by and continue on, maybe look at Minerva reef South and stop there. But the wind had other ideas and it headed us, forcing Puddytat to head directly for the reef. Then it suddenly dropped to 13 knots. We could clearly see the entrance to the lagoon shaped reef. It was nice and wide. David changed his mind and said ''we're going in.... under sail''. We swooped through the entrance into lovely calmer water, and just then, the wind turned from beam on to head on.. what timing! We dropped the sails, turned on the engines and motored to a spot at the north end to drop the anchor. It was Monday afternoon. I was worried sick about my parents. We didn't have a SSB transmitter on board. We had a receiver and Evi had promised to relay their position at 4.30 every afternoon. We'd heard two positions and plotted them on the chart, then when we got a third we discovered it was exactly the same as the second, which was very weird, two plots 24 hours apart cannot be the same we thought... Later we found out what had happened. At the time though, we were not sure whether my Dad had made a mistake and plotted East instead of West so now we weren't sure where he was. Very very worrying. There were a group of Ham radio bods in New Zealand where were trying to keep in contact with Dad and sometimes we'd hear them wondering why they hadn't heard from him. One chap said that it was obvious, that they had gone down and were dead. It shocked me to the core, my blood ran cold. David looked at me and told me not to worry, they were fine, just out of radio contact for some reason.

In the reef it was the weirdest feeling, to be anchored out in the middle of the ocean, no land or trees in sight, just some waves breaking all around us showing us that there was something there. Ros and I jumped into the water and cleaned the hulls. David was working on something inside the boat, I can't remember what now, but it was a far hotter messier job than we had. The next day, after he'd completed some other work on Puddytat, David had his turn, he wanted to give the props a good clean so in he went. It was late afternoon when he finally finished and the wind was still too southerly and still very strong. Soooo frustrating, it was hard for me to relax.  We stayed another night and early on Wednesday morning we left Minerva reef North. We were almost a full week behind them.

We had a totally uneventful sail to New Zealand, the winds were alternatively stronger and then lighter as the sailing goes on long trips. So some days we had all the sail up and others we reefed down sometimes to two reefs. I must say that I do prefer to sail on the Atlantic ocean as against the Pacific. The Atlantic is a much smoother sail, much more comfortable and has many more dolphin that come and play around the bows of our boat. Puddytat flew over that water, we made the best use of the wind and clocked an average of 9 knots. We sailed, listened to the radio and after two days got another position, I plotted it and couldn't find the x. So I plotted it again, still no x. I'm standing there looking at the chart plotter thinking, what am I doing wrong? Then something made me zoom in, or out, I can't remember now and there it was a beautiful red x right under us.. YAY!!!! We were exactly where Kudana had been 14 hours before. Now to try and find them, a tiny yacht on a HUGE ocean. David said that logically my Dad would be trying to make as straight a line to Opua as possible, so we'd do the same. It's what we'd been doing the whole time and it had paid off so far. He instructed Ros and I to call Kudana on the radio every hour. So we did this through the night on our watches. Morning came and we hadn't heard anything. A tad worrying as we knew they were only doing about 3 knots at most, we should have caught up with them by now. After breakfast David got up and went to the radio, he'd decided to call again. Oh Joy of joys my Mom answered the radio and we started to cry. I hadn't realised how tense with worry I'd been. It wasn't much later when we spotted her and we sailed up to say hi. We were 400 nautical miles from Opua. Still a way to go, but we'd found them and that was all I cared about.

We asked about the two positions, how'd they been the same. Dad said that during that storm, we'd been sitting out in Minerva reef, they couldn't steer and had sailed in a huge circle and ended up where they'd been before. A very strange thing to happen, but it did. We also asked why we hadn't heard regular position reports. He told us that his SSB had gone on the fritz and he worked on it trying to repair it and managed to get it working long enough to hit send on an email to my brother, Kevin who lives in NZ, and then Kev sent it on to the radio ham guys to transmit to us. At the time he didn't know if it had gone through. He just had to hope that it had.

Kudana, 1.5 miles away.. even though she's on top of a wave she's hard to see.

Down in the trough and she's almost impossible to see.

Ros and I were ultra busy, what with keeping the skipper fed with hot meals, (and us too,) we were also involved in making a courtesy flag for New Zealand. This proved to be an entertaining and interesting pastime. It was also fun to be in constant contact with Kudana. We spent Christmas day playing Christmassy music to each other and chatting, it would have been fun if the seas were nice and calm that we could raft up together and have a huge lunch.... as it was I'd cooked up the last of our fresh meat, a roast chicken, for our main meal that day. Boy did we ever pig out.. YUM.. ;-)
We don't ever buddy boat with anyone so this was a new experience for us. It was now only 105 NM to go till Opua, we thought we'd get there on the 27th Dec.

Making our New Zealand courtesy flag...

Dad insisted that he wanted to sail Kudana all the way to Opua. We wanted to take them under tow. So we sailed as slowly as we could with a tiny bit of sail up so that we didn't leave them behind. But now Dad said that the wind wasn't playing nice and he just couldn't control the boat anymore. We sailed up and started the long process of passing tow ropes etc. It took 2 hours to get the boats tied properly. My Dad was exhausted. We set our genoa and started to sail, pulling them behind us and our speed was already up to 5 knots. Dad radioed and asked what they should do, we told them to get some sleep, leave the radio on and if there was a problem we'd wake them up. They were so exhausted they slept for 12 hours solid. Shame.

Under Tow for the next 100 nautical miles.

A few days later we were almost there. I started to cook up a huge meal, kind of like a Lasagne, with the layered lasagne pasta, white sauce and corned beef out of cans.. I've never done it that way before, but I didn't have any fresh meat left and I needed to be able to feed all of us. I used dried crumbed Parmesan Cheese, the stuff in a shake out bottle, and the last of our cheese and it turned out rather well.

When we  came into the sheltered waters of the Bay of Islands, we dropped the tow and came alongside Kudana and rafted up with her. From then on we had to motor. Customs and Immigration were well aware that we were on our way in. All the sailors in the area were aware as well. When we arrived at the Q dock, where all newcomers to NZ have to go to clear customs and immigration, there were loads of people at the yacht club watching our progress.

The space between the fuel dock and the Q dock isn't large and David had to maneuver both yachts in and dock us. I was in charge of tying us up he said... He first turned us around so that it would be easier to get out and then docked. As simple as that. He made it look so easy. Many of the sailors came to us afterward and said that they hadn't seen seamanship like that in years. Made me so proud of him.

The Customs guys were great. We couldn't have asked for nicer treatment, even though they had to relieve us of some fresh veg and such, it was all done with a smile and a joke. They came down and attended to us even though we'd have been happy to spend the night on the customs dock. They told us there was bad weather coming and they thought that we'd need to get out into the anchorage and get our anchors in well and good and this was the time to do it. How nice is that! Thank you guys.

Once we were done with them, I slipped the lines and we went off to find a spot to drop the anchors. First we dropped Dads anchor and pulled back on it hard with both engines at 1800 rpm, to dig it in nice and deep, then we went and dropped ours, did the same, switched off the engines and looked at each other... Time for a drink we all said at once.. LOL what a relief to be safe and sound, to have my folks safe and sound. I slept really well that night.

Aitutaki Island, trying to get in.

We arrived at the island at about 08:00 and were very pleased that we'd managed to get there during the daylight hours. We knew that navigating up the small channel they had was not going to be easy as it was very shallow in places and not very wide. We have a beam width of 23 feet so we have to be careful about where we go. :-)

A reef all around the island.. where is the entrance?

We motored around trying to find the channel by eye. We could not see any marker buoys or posts anywhere, so we decided to follow the chart plotter.

As we neared the entrance marked on the plotter I got more and more jittery. David was standing on the bow and i was following his directions. First he told me to drive to starboard and then to port. The plotter showed no reason to be taking these deviations. I got more worried. The surf was pounding on the reef around us and sounded ominous. we could see a dark stretch of straight water ahead, indicating a long deepish channel, but just before that the water looked really shallow. It was hard to tell the depth because the water was so crystal clear. I don't know if you've ever experienced that. you can be in 40 ft of water yet the bottom looks as close as 1 or 2 feet, very disorientating. Just then I noticed that the depth sounder was not reading a bottom.. great I thought just what we need right now... I wanted to get out of there but David said to go on, and then it happened. We hit the reef. An loud awful grinding and bashing, bumping sound. I started to shake, oh Shit I thought. David yelled at me to get us out of there, I yelled back that he should come and take the wheel and I'd guide him out. He is way better at the helm than I am. So we swapped places.

It was just as well. I was showing him the direction he needed to go when he yelled that he had no steering.. Oh Shit I thought again. He worked the engines and propellers hard and managed to swing us around and out of danger. As soon as we were clear and in 30 feet of water we dropped the anchor. We needed to assess the damage and figure out what to do.

David donned his fins and snorkel and jumped into the water. He took a look at the rudders. The port one had bent it's shaft a tad and was jammed up against the hull. What to do. He came up on deck and we discussed our options. One was to disengage the rudder from the system and try and go in with only one rudder, the other was to drop it out, dinghy ashore and get it straightened there. There was another option and we thought we'd give it a go.

David went into the water with a long line that we'd draped over the bow roller where the anchor chain normally goes, he swam it back to the rudder and tied it around the blade. I attached the other end to the windlass, ( the machine we use to pull the anchor up), and then I slowly tensioned the line. I had to release it a couple of times while David did some adjusting but eventually we managed to pull the rudder straight again. What a huge and profound relief. We sat in the cockpit marveling at our narrow escape for a lot of extra work and inconvenience.

While sitting there David decided to go through the information we had for these islands. We have several cruising guides, and in one of them we found a note to say that the Chart plotted entrance for this island was false... well we knew that now ;-p ...  anyway this chap gave us some way points to follow to get into the anchorage. David plotted them and they were quite far from where the plotter had told us to go.

The marked channel and then the triangles where we actually ended up going.

We decided to take another chance. I'd calmed down now and was determined not to let this place beat me. So there I was once again at the helm with David standing at the bows directing me a little left and then a little right.... Before I knew it we were in the channel, which by the way was marked with thin maybe 10 mm black sticks that you could hardly see till you were almost upon them. I was still nervous but I didn't feel the foreboding that I'd felt before, even when the depth got down to 2.5  feet. :-)

It didn't take long and soon I was turning us around, dropping the anchor and backing Puddytat towards the shore so that David could tie our stern to a tree. This was the way that these folks liked our boats to be anchored apparently.

We sat back and relaxed, taking in our surroundings. Whew what an ordeal. It was 12:33.

Tied up and looking at our new back yard.

Onward! to the Marquesas Islands....

The Marquesas Islands. You know contrary to experience, we read up on places we'd like to visit. We talk to people who've been there, to get their take on the place and then we go...and we inevitably find it to be radically different to our expectations. Its quite amazing the difference. So we've read up on these islands..a lot..we've been told that the snorkeling and diving is exceptional...loads of fish varieties...but not many corals....the water is wonderfully clear with great visibility....the islanders are friendly and will barter food for things....its been hard to find out what things..but we've stocked up with stuff for the children and some vanity stuff for young ladies. It will be interesting to see all of this for ourselves. That's all part of the fun of traveling.

Sunset Day 1

I could give you a day by day blow of what we did but I wonder if that might get boring. So I'll tell the interesting bits ...Day 1 ..we managed to do a lot of sailing, but were heading into the wind and so progress is slow..even on a cat...the wind kept moving around..and I mean moving around. It blew from the south then a few minutes later it moved west then north then east then south and then west then north....and from 0 knots to 20 knots. All in one night...David put in one reef at sundown, then he shook it out a few hours later...a comment in the log book “Our route plot looks like a 2 year old's attempt to join the dots “...I struggled to keep the boat on a reasonable course during my watch...forever tacking this way and that, Eventually David took over at 2am and he had the same fun..putting in reefs and then having to shake them out again...we were both exhausted and we were going nowhere fast..or even slowly.!Oh yes we also had rain, and lightening, and more rain and then some more rain....So eventually David hove-to...ahh peace and quiet. We might as well try and get some rest until the wind makes it's mind up as to what it's going to do :-) Our goal was to sail SW so any direction in the S to W quadrant was acceptable, but sometimes we were headed WNW and others ESE as our angle between tacks was about 120 deg with the current factored in (it was against us).

With all this going on, David saw that one of the sail's battens was working its way out..so he re- positioned it and tightened it up...then he had to repair the topping lift rope..it had chafed through and he had to tie another rope to it, to get it working again. So the dawn hours found us sailing under genoa only whilst repairs were done.

As you can see a very frustrating time...:-p

Our 24hour distance covered...a mere 61 nautical miles.. ;-( A SURPRISE...David called 'Good News' on the VHF and they responded.. whoo hoo, we swapped positions and found that we were about 13 miles away from them...we chatted about the conditions and they were pleased to hear that we'd also decided to hove-to. Then we lost radio contact and that was that... sigh... we sailed on slowly. By the time it was my watch again we were racing along at 2.7 knots :-P the ocean was almost a mirror, hardly a breath of wind. We'd decided to take a break and have a sundowner ...it cost us a mile..we drifted backwards.....and by the end of my watch..6 hours later I was so frustrated with trying to keep the boat moving... I wanted to scream..I was more than happy to hand over to David at 2 am...It was starting to drizzle...boy was I ever happy to be climbing into my bunk.

Rain Clouds, everywhere we looked.

David got a bit of wind so at least the boat was moving..about 4 knots....and in the right direction too...and so during the day we pottered on...slowly...we only run the engine when we need to charge the batteries..for about 2 hours a day if there has been no sun, for the solar panels.

The GPS was having some fun too..note the lines off to the side..we did not actually do that.

And so it comes around to me again...my watch on the Monday night...30^th May....no wind again. I sat at the helm willing the boat forward...and accomplished an astounding 2 nautical miles in 6 hours...yeah I thought I'd been frustrated yesterday...Boy! Tonight really took the cake! I was in a really bad mood when I went to bed...of course by the time I woke up the wind had risen to a roaring 4 knots....and we were once again racing along... comment in the log book... We have done an amazing 3 ¾ miles ( as the crow flies) in the last 12 hours and probably twice that over ground in tack changes and wind shifts.”

When was this going to end....please please give us a decent breeze. We'd even whistled for the wind during sundowners..to no avail.

By mid morning we were finally moving at 5.7 knots...a much more respectable speed. Then at 15:04 ...we heard “ crack! Shuck shuck shuck.clack clack” what the heck....???? we both realised at the same time..the main halyard has broken the main sail is down! Heck …..we just get moving and now this! David took our topping lift....the rope that holds up the end of the boom and tied it to the Main...."Okay" he said "we'll do without a topping lift...sail like this and when the wind dies again I'll go up the mast and sort it out"......did the wind die again..heck no!!

Okay so that was on Day 4. The wind stayed at between 5 and 15 knots with very choppy seas...like in a top loader washing machine., so it's been impossible for David to go up to the top of the mast as yet. We've had loads of rain and had to constantly drape ourselves over the transom to bail Limo, our tender, as her bailer holes seemed to be blocked with something...we found out later that it was blocked with onion skins. Also there seemed to be a lot of water getting into the Puddytat via an outside locker. In really rough seas we are used to going down and pumping the shower well out every now and then, but this was ridiculous..every third wave that broke over us I knew I'd have to go down and pump...Why?

The first time I realised that there was a problem the shower was totally awash with water slopping into the cabin area..what a mess. I had to bail into the basin whilst David cleaned out the filter for the pump. There was broken bits of shell and hair clogging it. Still, why was Puddytat taking on so much water? David watched the movement of the boat and it seemed as if the port bow was struggling to lift out of the waves, what was making it so heavy? He went forward to investigate. In the very pointy section of the bow is a locker that we keep our fenders in. The lid locks down, its not water proof so water gets in, but there is a drain for the water to escape through. The ropes from the fenders had somehow worked their way down and out through the drain, blocking it rather effectively. So the locker filled with water, the fenders were pushing against the locker lid and nearly escaped entirely when David opened it up. Now when we put the fenders into that locker..we tie all the ropes together. This seems to have done the job of stopping them from blocking the drain. The bow, filled with water, was having a hard time lifting up after it had plunged down into waves. Once David cleared the drain hole everything returned to normal. Since then we've had hardly any water into the shower well.

You may be asking, why does water get into the boat via an outside locker...well for some strange reason, when the fuel tanks were installed into those lockers, some clever soul drilled a nice big hole from there into the inner works of Puddytat, at the lowest level of the locker, to put hoses through. So now water sometimes finds its way through that hole and into the shower. Thank heavens its into the shower and not into any other part of the yacht...Just another job on David's list of things to change to our liking.

Anyway so Day 5 slipped by, we're pretty exhausted. This section of the trip is sure taxing my sailing prowess, goodness knows what a woman who's sailing with her husband 'because he wants to', feels. I'm totally bushed, she'd be ' hey there , beam me up Scotty, I've had enough'...I actually said to David ..'Okay, stop the boat I wanna get off'...kinda jokingly just to let him know that I was feeling rather stretched... In times like this you can decide to hove-to. Its wonderfully calming and restful. You can get a good few hours of relaxed sleep that will fortify you and off you go again. We didn't, we're seasoned sailors don't cha know..ha ha Oh yes I forgot to tell you, Remember we'd spent that time in the Las Perlas islands cleaning the bottom of the boat? Well later that day I discovered yet another tiny crab hiding out in one of my ears! I kid you not! This is the 4^th time its happened, damned annoying. Anyway I don't know why but this time I got earache...so here we are sailing along with all this stuff happening and I've got earache..which then infects one of my teeth, so I get tooth ache...sheesh! I treated the earache with a mixture of half water half vinegar squirted into my ear 2 or three times a day, plus two Iboprufen just before bed so that I could get some sleep.

It worked....eventually.

During the night the wind decided to strengthen to 28 knots so we put a second reef in the main. Puddytat sailed better and we didn't really slow down that much. Also saw 4 ships during my watch.

Day 6 was entirely uneventful. It slid by, strong winds and lots of rain, but peaceful..thanks.

The same could not be said of Day 7...I woke up and on going above to greet David and the day, I was informed that we would have to hove-to to fix the Port trampoline. Ho hum. It had been bashed by the water so much that the stitching that was probably rather UV damaged just gave out, so it was half dangling in the water. Also Flea, our other dinghy, was tied down to it, so we had to come up with a plan. Another thing was the roller furler rope for the genoa sail, it had chafed through and needed to be replaced... so two jobs to be done and I hadn't had breakkies yet...pooh

The front pole on the trampoline broke..and then everything just fell apart..

When we hove-to and went forward we realised that the roller furler job would be easy but that we couldn't repair the trampoline, we'd have to remove it, but that would leave a huge open space there. So we came up with a great idea. We wove ropes back and forth as best we could. You couldn't walk on it but if you slipped and fell you wouldn't fall through it. Good Ja! ...Ja! :-) Those two jobs took four hours and during that we'd drifted 4 miles backwards. But the job was done!

Our new trampoline.. :-D

We cut the line and tied it off...

I forgot there was one other job to be done before we set sail......We'd run over yet another long line and it had caught on something under the boat... David had cut it but it was still under us. He tied it to one of the stanchion poles, and now he had to go swimming to cut it away from under the boat...he thought maybe it was tangled around the props....

While he was doing that I had some much needed toast and pate to eat. Toast, you ask, do you have a toaster on board?...we do, but not like you'd recognise. :-) In the UK you can buy these great little fold up flat toasters that you can set on a camp fire, we wanted one but in the States you can only buy those stand up Coleman toasters for the fire...we don't like them. So we had to improvise...we looked everywhere for something that was made of mesh and that would lie flat on our gas (propane) stove. We were walking through Office Mart and I saw an envelope holder..the type you put on your side table at home to hold the post. I stopped, picked one up turned it on it's back and looked at David. He smiled and bought two. It's perfect for toasting the bread that David bakes...well for any bread really. ;-)

Our Toaster ! :-D

Suddenly I heard a yell..Oh heck I thought, there is a 2 knot current running, he had strung a rope to the boat with a fender at the end of it so that he could grab onto it if the current pulled him away from the boat, had he missed it, did I have to go and rescue him? Fortunately that wasn't the problem, or maybe unfortunately, because David had been stung rather badly by a blue bottle, he had welts all over him...out came the vinegar again..Its great at neutralizing the sting. He did, however, clear the props of line before he got out, so we were soon on our way again.

The sting marks stayed with David for about a day.

Day 8. David's suffering from sunburn from yesterday and he lost a filling that he'd had done up in Mexico. In the late afternoon David spotted a sail, behind us, and over time watched it get closer. We were doing 7.5 knots with one reef in the main and this other yacht was slowly catching us up. He called them and they answered. The boat is called Rapparee, Don and Sally are delivering her to New Zealand. She's a 60 foot yacht, and she has her main and jib out fully and is doing 8 knots. That's why she's catching us.. ha ha We watch them sail by, it takes them about 3 hours to finally overtake us. They're heading for the Galapagos Islands for a day or two to do some repairs..we tell them that we're not going but they give us some info about the best place to drop anchor if we decide we need to go there.

Rapparee

Day 9. We've used rather a lot of fuel and David's filling up the log book with calculations of estimates to see if we can last till the Marquesas or if we should stop at the Galapagos islands for a top up. We discuss it and decide that if we need to conserve fuel, we'll cook all the food in the freezer and store it into the fridge then switch the freezer off. We're only using 3 gallons of water a day at the moment, but maybe we could economise some more...so saving using the water maker..also we can run the engines at lower revs when we charge the batteries...Okay so no worries we'll just carry on.

During the afternoon the boat kept on veering off at a tangent...why? We sail with the autopilot on 'wind'. Are there big wind changes going on? David looks up at the top of the mast. Our wind direction instrument has been knocked sideways, maybe by a bird. He switches the auto pilot to compass heading...Add it to the list. Every evening at six thirty we put a symbol of a Martini glass on our track, then we look back to see how far we've traveled since the last one. Its kinda fun. I also take a photo of the sunset, if its not clouded over and raining. Today we've sailed 181 miles since cocktail hour yesterday. :-)

As usual I take over and start my night watch at 8 pm..20h00. We're traveling at 9.3 knots ..this is great. Don't know what the wind speed is but it feels much the same as it has been for the last day or so.

Then at 20h50, …..DISASTER!!! The topping lift that we had moved to become a main halyard snapped. The main came sliding down the mast. I yelled for David and went to center the boom so that it wouldn't smash the solar panels. Fortunately it missed them. But now we had no way to get the main back up. We're sailing with the genoa only. What the heck is chafing the ropes through all of a sudden. We've done heaps of sailing all the way from Hawaii to Canada and down the west coast of the USA, Mexico for 2 years, down the Americas...with no problems..AND we've replaced these lines {ropes} with new, so it's not as if they are old and worn out.

We're a day away from the Galapagos Islands...it seems that we are fated to stop there. David is not happy about this. We envisage huge costs, for the privilege of anchoring there to do our repairs. Fortunately we'd got that info from Don and Sally the other day, it was going to come in handy.

The x's are where we've been and the cocktail glasses are our course we've traveled on this leg, the 'x' in front of us is our way point to sail to.

Day 10. We have an uneventful sail, didn't have to tack again, the wind was kind and we sailed right to Wreck Bay on St Crystobal Island in the Galapagos, dropping anchor at 8pm... 20h00....

The sun going down as we head into port....

Wonder what tomorrow will bring...and how the heck is David going to get up that mast with no ropes to pull him up?

See ya. :-)