November 19th

Sailing is such a challenge sometimes. Yesterday was going very smooth and by the afternoon the weather started to change on us. We had light winds and calm seas and by noon the seas started to get very disturbed. The winds were a fresh 15 kts and the sail plan we had up wasn't working. We changed the sails several times and no matter what we did we could only get 4.5 kts out of a 15kt 90-60 degree apparent wind angle. We scratched our heads and we could never come up with a solution. We sailed all night at 4.5 kts and just accepted it. In past sail configurations we have seen our speeds around 6.5 kts this is why we were frustrated. This morning the air was very cool and more clothing was needed to keep us warm. The wind started to pick up and the seas became rough. We were right in the middle of a low pressure system and the rain started to fall. The winds have changed from a east to a south east and our heading is 180 magnetic. We will stay on this heading until 33 degrees south and then the wind is fore casted to change to the north, northwest. then we will make our turn toward Opua and have a nice tail wind . The weather models have predicted this to happen so we are trusting these models to get us in by Friday morning. Friday night a new low is fore casted to hit the NZ coast and we want to be in before this hits. Position S 27 46.000 E 173 17.099