My night watch passes without incident and yet again I am able to sleep when I am supposed to.
The winds are still light which means we continue to make painfully slow process unless we put one of the engines on. However, during the afternoon the wind picks up quite significantly and suddenly we are flying along in 22 knots of wind with a speed of 13.5 knots, not consistently, mainly it’s around 10 knots – it is skimming down the waves that we get that speed.
The downside of this is rougher sea, not enough to make me feel ill. but enough to give the boat frequent unexpected lurches in the wrong direction to throw you off balance. I’ll count the bruises tomorrow!
Although I haven’t felt ill on this passage, I’m disappointed nevertheless that I am not enjoying the sailing more overall. Oh yes, there are times when I actively enjoy it, but those are the odd days or hours when all the conditions are perfect. Most of the time, it is something which has to be endured in order to get from A to B, and sometimes enduring it is incredibly hard. I know I am lucky to have the opportunity of doing this trip, but my luck is in seeing all the places that I am visiting (which I wouldn’t have been able to see any other way), not in the journey from one place to another. That’s just a necessary evil. If I could just fly home from time to time it would help a huge amount but I can’t as it’s just not practical to leave Mike alone on the boat and we don’t want to have extra crew aboard. I suppose, as usual, I want my cake and eat it!
Still, with our increased speed today, at least we know we’ll be in Niue tomorrow.
Our position is: 19 deg 23 min S, 168 deg 55 min W
Distance so far: 7881 nautical miles
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