Plugging On

First I have to say thanks to all the wonderful people who emailed me with suggestions and advice and encouragement after my little crisis yesterday. A guy with 40 years sailing experience emailed me from Devon, England - wonderful - and he and the other experts seemed to agree I had the problem sorted but would have to take the clips off, or at least loosen them if I was to use the motor - which is fine because I only plan to use the motor for short intervals, such as getting to an anchorage. It's now a day since I put those clips on and not a single drop has emerged from that spot - I watched it closely for the first few hours, believe you me.

So we trundle along on Port. Harder sailing today as the wind has increased to 20 knots and the sea has risen accordingly. I have reduced sail and altered course away from the wind slightly so that our motion is as comfortable as can be expected and so that we maintain a reasonable speed through the water, which is around 5 knots. Much less than that the boat seems to wallow and buck like a rocking horse, and much faster is just too much bashing and crashing. Even so occasionally a big splash lands in the cockpit but if I am tucked up under the dodger, I stay dry. The sky is covered almost completely by a thin high cloud sheet with a cobbled sort of pattern, Its not cold and I have been wearing shorts for several days. I had baked beans for lunch today, reminding me of the days when I worked full time in Australia, south of Sydney - every single day for several years my secretary made me a toasted baked bean sandwich for lunch . I had read they were good for cholesterol, and I never got sick of them.

It's a pain having to zig zag towards our destination, bashing into waves and wind all the time, always having the wind coming onto the boat from in front, as this is the slowest way to get there. I checked our course from yesterday for 24 hours to this morning and we traveled over 100 miles. However we ended up only 62 miles closer to Tubuai. Today will be better I think.

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