Sails and engine - all in a day's work.
Only it is not work really, we get a beer in the middle of the day. The wind kept up for us during the day, pulsing away like mad, and we kept the spinnaker up well into the night. Progress was steady rather than spectacular, and as I write we still have some 200 miles to push. So it will probably be well into Friday night when we arrive, just in time to miss the prize-giving and barbecue which World Cruising have arranged for us at Yorkey's Knob. We will have to clear in at Cairns first, which means that getting Cleone to Yorkey's Knob that night is not really practicable. We then need to be back in Cairns for Monday morning as Cleone is coming out of the water for a wash and brush-up (and a whole lot of other jobs as well), so we might just sit tight in Cairns itself. And it will be a whole lot easier for Elizabeth and Will to sort out their travel arrangements and so on.
As yesterday afternoon wore on, we dropped first the Mizzen and then the Mizzen staysail. But we kept the big spinnaker up for as long as we could, and only dropped it when we turned southwards towards the wind to get through the gap in the outer reef. It was wonderful to see how the crew coped with this - digging themselves out of their bunks to execute a perfect piece of difficult sail handling in the middle of the night. We will miss them sorely. And in the small hours, the wind finally kept its promise and died, so the engine has been on again ever since.
All well with us, and best wishes to everyone.
James, Elizabeth and Will
Yacht Cleone