Bora Bora to Suwarrow: 23rd July

Bora Bora to Suwarrow: Day 3: 23rd July 2023
Miles to Suwarrow: 455 miles

Another largely incident free night saw us continue until midnight on the same downwind starboard reach. We took in the yankee leaving its pole in place for rerunning it this morning. As I came on watch it started to drizzle and the wind veered so much we were travelling east of north. Not ideal when our destination is 500 miles away in a WNW direction. A couple of other things worth mentioning on that watch. Firstly I am really enjoying my Audible book The Martian about an astronaut who gets stranded on Mars (Sally tells me it's been made into a film too). And secondly I have to own up to falling asleep at the end of the watch at 3 am. Gill had to wake me up - very embarrassing and rather worrying for her as she thought I had fallen overboard.

Otherwise the weather has grown increasingly grim through the day. Very little sun, lots of rain - squalls and more persistent rain and it's getting chilly too as we are at 15°S now.

I hardly need tell you we lost another fish today. Just as Sally was deploying her own angling equipment my rod screamed. This one stopped more quickly than yesterday's but he managed to shake the two single hooks and escape again. At least today we didn't lose the lure too.

During the rain this afternoon I've had another look at the fridge which hasn't worked since Panama. The engineer in the Galapagos said I need a new compressor but I've heard these rarely break. I thought I would trace the 12 volt supply from batteries to fridge and I found a loose connection just where the wire entered the compressor. I think I may have fixed it but it is so noisy on board I can't hear it running so will wait until it is lighter and drier tomorrow to test it properly.

Tomorrow we should be halfway to Suwarrow giving a late Thursday arrival. As we are going so far north to avoid the depressions further south we are going to consider not going south down to Tonga but instead going on west to American Samoa and then direct to Fiji. We shall see.

Omelettes tonight- my speciality.

So it's goodbye from a happy crew aboard a very wet and miserable Mehalah.

GUESS WHAT? We can now see blue sky ahead of us and our course is now directly towards Suwarrow.

You can follow us at: www.noforeignland.com/boat/Mehalah/journey

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