After a near-perfect day of sailing yesterday, the winds picked up right around dusk and stayed at 22-23 knots for almost the entire night. The seas increased and became choppy which made it less comfortable on board. As a swell approached Rutea's beam, she would roll to starboard and as the wave passed under her, she'd roll to port. Even with two reefs tucked in the main and the genoa reefed down, we were still healing at a good angle which intensified the rolling action. Our Speed Over Ground (SOG) was consistently over 8 knots and I even saw us hit 10 knots at one point. All that can make it hard to get a good nights sleep.
However, this morning the winds have eased to about 17 knots and the sky is clear. Chesterfield Reef is less than 80 miles away and hopefully once there we'll be able to catch up on our sleep.
Our friends on Dilligaf are less than a mile off our starboard beam and Mark on Merkava is almost 18 miles behind us - he's no longer in VHF radio range.
Our spirits are good and Rutea's systems continue to operate well. Other than eating too much (Australia's BioSecurity is going to confiscate almost all the food on board when we arrive so we're working hard at depleting our ship-board inventory), we're having a great time.
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At 10/29/2012 10:07 PM (utc) Rutea's position was 19°11.00'S 159°36.00'E
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