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Mischief - A little bit more Mischief Log 9



Day 18 Saturday 17 March 2018. Northerlies?; through 200 nm; England disaster; boat scrubbed; Trevor offers to make us compliant; ETA firming up

The wind increased slightly in the middle of the night and settled into the north east, occasionally due north, not forecast on any grib files I've seen. This has put us onto a beam reach so not ideal with a boomed out genoa and intent on holding a direct course. We managed around 5-6 knots through the night and first light set the genoa normally and dropped the pole for a beam reach and put another knot of speed on. At 0815 we went through the 200 nm to destination mark.

Had a YB text from the wife this morning - Ireland have beaten England 14-25 in the final Six Nations match, putting England 5th in the table having started favourites - what a disaster; they say worse things happen at sea but not so far on this trip! No Guinness for us to celebrate St Patricks.

Today ought to be our penultimate day at sea on our trans Pacific, well I sincerely hope so, and so Trevor and I were on deck with scrubbing brush in hand a bucket on a rope to swab the decks so at least we will be partially presentable when we arrive. I suppose we will have to scrub ourselves to make ourselves presentable as well as the boat but actually, this is not the case as with the water maker on board we have had the luxury of having a shower every other day, regardless of whether we needed it or not!

1200 Position: 10 ?01.8' S 135 ?54' W C: 275 W: NE 22/25 knts SOG: 7/8 knts 24 hr run: 144 nm

1230 The wind has increased up to 25 knots NE so we put one reef in the main now on a course of 272 degrees with 7+ knots speed and 170 nm distance to run. The waves are now directly behind us and we are rolling incessantly.

The afternoon has been cloudy and windy, generally not very inviting but at least we are going fairly fast in the right direction. Talk on the SSB net this afternoon made mention of the Chris Tibbs' warning of heavy squalls and thunder storms in the southern approaches to Hiva Oa and one boat has already put a third reef in just in case! The intel is to stay above 10 degrees south and we should miss them - we are presently on 10 degs south and heading gently towards 9 degs so hopefully we ought to miss them. The other warning to take note of was a reference to the amount of alcohol one is allowed to take into French Polynesia, apparently 2 liters of wine and two liters spirits each person otherwise risk it being confiscated and a fine - as we have more than this on board Trevor has unselfishly put him self forward and volunteered to make us compliant single-handedly this evening. What a trooper!

We had a bite on the rod line whilst Trevor was below decks sleeping but by the time he got up top it had well gone. Seems we are running out of luck on the fish front as we cannot really fish close in to the islands because of the disease ciguatera carried by predator fish feeding on reef fish - the same as in the Caribbean. By close of play we reeled in the lines just before dark and would not be surprised if we didn't bother at all tomorrow.

1630 and the wind sounds like its dropping again - oh no!! We need a constant 6 knots boat speed to arrive in day light tomorrow. We are going to have chilli for tea so if we make it hot enough it may allow us to create our own wind but that really is clutching at straws.

At 1700 we had 144 nm to run which at 6 knots for 24 hours means we will be in Hiva Oa at 1700 from which we can take another 1 1/2 hours tome difference, thus arriving at 15530. That would be perfect but it does depend on this 6 knots speed. As it stands at 2100 this evening we are still doing that sort of speed but the boat continues to roll all over the place. Before dark we had very dark skies and cumulus clouds developing to our south which must be those thunder storms mentioned earlier but the clouds to our north are quite high so hopefully we won't have a squally night. I shall let you know tomorrow!



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