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Exody - Days 60-63 - Halfway point - Pam's not for us



Cyclone Pam is apparently the top news story today and folks at home are worried for us - but she is the best part of 5000 miles away to the west and the World ARC route and timing is of course carefully designed to avoid such seasonal threats! When we get to Vanuatu in July (after the cyclone season), we hope to find the damage not too severe - World ARC participants past and current will be doing whatever they can to support the locals. Yesterday evening (Friday 13th) at 21.00 hours boat time (UTC minus 7 hours) we passed the halfway mark - 1500 miles down after nine days and ten hours, 1500 to go. As I write this (Saturday 14th, 14.00) its down to 1400 miles - it feels good to be counting down now to the finish - it's a vast place this Pacific Ocean!

We are into a third day of mostly clear skies and settled weather with 15 to 20 knot winds from the east south east giving us a broad reach directly toward Hiva Oa - Exody eating up the miles with an average days run over the last 4 days of 170 miles, and, since the beginning of this leg ten days ago, 160 miles, both much better than my forecast of 140.

Tuesday night had seen a close encounter with a brightly lit Japanese fishing boat - we had to motor to pass her bow as these boats have long lines of up to several miles from their sterns. They also do not apparently alter course for yachts and do not answer the VHF !

Wednesday's mood was coloured with the sad news that a good university friend had died in a tragic accident on his farm last week. This made us all take stock and for me reinforced the 'carpe diem' philosophy behind our doing this trip in the first place. Late in the evening we finally saw a sail which turned out to be Pentagram, a 41 foot Oyster, who is normally well ahead of us - we kept the lights in view most of the night and are still pacing each other on a similar course.

The steering line for the Aries self-steering chafed through on Thursday morning - duly replaced with a spare and whilst reorganising the pulleys a wave came over the rear quarter and I was lucky only to loose a U bolt and not my spanners. With the cockpit cushions floating in the partly filled cockpit, Marian below witnessed a small waterfall into our aft cabin soaking the foot of the cushions - we realised that the steering pedestal that had taken a belt in a gybe several weeks ago must need it's base re-sealed to the cockpit floor.

We were under single reefed main and genny all day and the wave risk meant all hatches closed and foulweather gear for the night watch. Despite the fairly robust conditions, Marian produced a superb beef curry that Petter summarised as 'advanced' ie in comparison to the simpler fare that he is more comfortable delivering on board!

Friday saw me reading my second only book since leaving home port in July - a good sign that things are generally under control and that I might be relaxing a bit!

Peter (Skipper)




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