Wednesday

Sleep is very broken, necessarily, because I need to check progress and make sure we are not too far off course and heading for the various reefs which litter the coral sea, and which have determined my route to Bundaberg.I try to sleep in he day but almost never can so at might whenj I finally do sleep its different to my usual experience because I have amazingly vivid dreams. One night I dreamd I was walking along the beachfront at Bundaberg and pointing out to sea and telling someone I was actually way out there on my boat and was having an amzing out-of-body expedience, but would have to go back there, reluctantly, soon. Last night I dremaed I was talking and joking with Muhammed Ali - in earlier times - as we were doing some sort of physio in a swimming pool. LAter I dreamed of a world cup rugby match between the All Blacks - wearing pale blue - and England, also wearing pale blue. It was raining and a crowd of English supporters were holding umbrellas over the English team as they packed down for a scrum.!! Work those out!

Today started calmly and then about 10 I noticed we were off course - the wind had strenghtened and gone South agaiun, so the Hydrovane naturally swung us toi the north west. The wind strengthened quickly to 22 knots and short steep seas built up as I reset our course and went below to a much more unpleasant ride, much more bumping and banging and the noise of wind and the waves and crashes and slaps and splashes of water...Bob had predicted strrengthening wind and the worse days of the trip to be tomorrow and friday as a "squash zone" develops above a high moving across the Tasman. I decided it was beginning to make its presence felt and looking ahead was a big wall of black cloud. By noon there was rain and stronger wind and it was all horrible but nothing was wrong, it was just going to be a rotten couple of days ....starting now.

IN fact it all settled a couple of hours later and we are back to 14 knots of wind from the south east and all the headsail is back out, the boat is moving more easily again...I guess the squash zone hasnt arrived yet...maybe tomorrow.

We have passed the second waypoint and are now a little over half way to Bundaberg. I couldnt raise Sailmail this morning so I hope reception is better this evening - the window seems rather small. If tomorrow turns out as Bob predicted and its rotten there might not be a Post till Friday night.

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