Position: 29 degrees, 26 minutes south; 171 degrees, 40 minutes east

We only did 98 miles in the last 24 hours, but expect to speed up the next few days. Our current target arrival is probably sometime Wednesday evening, but we’ll update this in the next day or so as we get closer.

It’s getting cold now. We had a beautiful starry night last night. Light wind. Quiet. But cold.

Ann and I both doubled up on the fleece, wool caps and a wool blanket while on watch. Tomorrow the thermal underwear is coming out and sea boots with wool socks!

Perversely, light wind means a lot of extra work to keep the boat going. Wilson does an exemplary job steering down to about six knots of wind, but below that he can’t keep going. Also, changes in wind strength at the lower end of the spectrum-around 5-8 knots-require lots of sail trim adjustment whereas at higher wind strengths there is more tolerance. If the wind drops a couple knots and the sails are not eased a little, Charisma just “parks” herself. Kind of a tantrum. Sooo from my watch starting at 0300 all the way through this afternoon I had to hand steer and constantly adjust stuff. Ann has pitched in by doing all the other stuff including (YAY) cooking dinner tonight.

Fortunately around 1400 the easterly that we’ve been expecting filled in. This has allowed us to turn the corner toward New Zealand as well as ease sails a bit. We’re now reaching with the wind on our port beam instead of close hauled with the wind 45 degrees forward of the beam. The latter leaves no options, but now we can aim where we want to go.

We’re looking forward to a fine night of stars, and some sleep!