Woke up to a continued current ride, seas forward of the beam, but moving fast – great sailing angle and still with the magical current. We’ve done a great job getting east away from the squall line and now we can correct a bit to south. Ahhhh, what a difference 15 degrees makes – our boat speed slows, the swells are gentle, and we can move about more freely. It’s great for morale too. I make up scrambled eggs and potatoes which taste glorious. We are on a rhumbline to Opua, New Zealand, our destination. We have a bit of drizzle. The seas mellow. We put up our bigger sail. Cora comes back to life; we all do.
Time to start eating up all the food that Biosecurity in New Zealand would take from us. I chop up a huge pile of veg to make fried rice. We nosh on popcorn and nuts.
Chris, while doing a walk-about of the boat to check on everything found the origin of an odd noise that Cora and I heard on watch a few nights back. Cora and I had heard on odd twanging sound, followed by a skitter of something on the cockpit hardtop; it didn’t sound good. None of us could figure it out. Today, Chris found one of our main sail battens up there, having been expelled from our mainsail, curious. The pocket must have ripped a bit; we’ll look at that in New Zealand.
Throughout the day, we sail, then motorsail (when winds down), then sail again. Overnight, a few container ships joined us, barreling down at speeds of 16 knots (eek!) and we adjusted course. We had some drizzles. Otherwise, we have escaped the Wall of Doom.
Miles in last 24 hours: 142.1 nm
Average speed last 24 hours: 5.9 (our slowest day so far)
Miles to Opua, New Zealand: 300 nm
SV Terikah Adventures 