What an experience. Pitcairn was all we’d hoped it would be. Alas, we only got to spend a day there - due to weather conditions coming in a few days time, we’ve opted to push onto Mangareva, in Isles Gambiers. This will be our first stop in French Polynesia. We’re straight back into night watches and the routine which has run our lives for the last month. When we’ve got things going and are a bit more relaxed, we’ll put up some photos of our incredible experience. In the meantime, it

Dawn sees us approaching Bounty Bay, Pitcairn after a night of tickling along at 2knots. The plan is to get ashore today but leave this evening for the Isles Gambiers due to the approaching N wind.

Alas, not Pitcairn but Henderson. We won't be stopping as it's just turned midnight here and picking our way into the anchorage safely would be impossible. Still it means we have just 110nm to Pitcairn! What we will probably do is slow down to arrive on Thursday morning as the anchorage is quite bumpy there and it's probably calmer at sea. Of course right at the time we want to slow down is the time when we have the best wind of the trip. Yet another night at sea but it will be worth it!

We motored overnight to try and get us closer to where the wind would be. Nothing much to report, other than the skipper arriving early for his watch due to not having changed the time on his phone. Oops! By 7am we had the engines off, and we were saying reasonably well - better than we had expected in fact. The latest weather forecast shows us actually being able to sail all the way without having to motor again, which is very good news. Even better news, the wind speeds may be enough to allo

We sailed a bit, we motored a bit, we inched our way closer to Pitcairn. It looks like another day or two of light winds before we get some SE winds back and can make real progress. Frustrating to be so close but once again just about drifting because we don’t want to burn too much more diesel. We have 1/4 of a tank left, plus some spare in jerry cans - so we’re probably being overcautious, but its not clear how long we’d have to wait at Isles Gambiers to get fuel (maybe for the next supp

Yesterday was windy, rainy with large seas bordering on rough. Today is sunny, calm seas and no wind. The ‘washing up’ engine is on, so we can shower in warm water for a change! The watermaker is going flat out, as is the washing machine and we’re charging everything we can lay our hands on...

We’ve been at sea over a month! Didn’t think it would take this long to cross 3600nm but the light winds at the start (and throughout) really cost us. Such is the pleasure of being dependent on the wind ;) The trade winds should have been SE giving us a decent beam reach most of the way, but we’ve had more E/ENE winds and done a lot more downwind/broad reach sailing. Yesterday we had classic anti-cyclone conditions - lots of gloomy cloud, rain and fairly strong winds with a pretty large s

This is what the radar shows when you are about to get drenched... And it was my watch, and I did get very wet indeed. I've just about dried about, but Anthony is on watch also about to get wet from yet another squall. Yes, it looks like we have bust out through the trades and into some variable weather. Currently the wind is NW which is nice current course. It is due to back (shift anti-clockwise) around us today and by tomorrow we should have SE winds reinforced by a high to the south of us.

Gorgeous sunrise this morning 680nm to go, but it will be a close run thing to get there for the calm conditions....

Last nights entertainment was dealing with the gennaker furling line. It had got itself wrapped around the line we used to hold the sail to the bowsprit. This gave us two problems - the first being how to furl the sail. We managed to handle that ok, with Anthony and myself on the foredeck - and we were furling due to lack of wind rather than too much which helped. The second problem was that as the sail hadn’t fully furled, when we re-hoisted it and tried to unfurl it - we got the classic ‘h

Slowly getting there. Alas there looks to be some wind quandaries ahead. Right now it's dropped right off, so we are back under headsail alone as the main just gets flogged by the swell. Hopefully it will fill a bit, though an easy night under just headsail is probably a good one :) The bigger query is what the wind will do from Thursday. The models suggest light winds, but that may just be the way a front is interpreted. If it is a front, we will get plenty of wind, rain and thunderstorms. Aft

This is what we see on the radar when we see squalls. In this case the squall has passed us (and I got a little wet). The line up the screen is our course. The dotted line is the course to Pitcairn. The line angled bottom left is an Electronic Bearing Line - something we use to mark items on the radar. If the object moves down the line directly towards us, it's going to hit us. If it moves off the line, the it will miss us. We have to take into account our course changes but that's the basics

Not much to report, really - we are still making reasonable progress SW towards Pitcairn. The sea continues to be very kind to us in terms of sea-state (and onboard comfort). The winds are a little further aft and a little lighter than we’d like - but we’re sailing and knocking off the miles. We now have 1170nm to go and the routing software we use shows us reaching Pitcairn in 9 days. Usually we’re a bit faster than the software predicts because it does not have accurate polars (wind spe

We had a glorious day yesterday - blue sky, wall to wall. A bit light on wind in the morning but picked up enough to be making reasonable progress in the afternoon. I was really looking forward to the early part of the night, with no moon and the wonderful southern sky. The Southern Cross is rising higher and higher and we’re slowly learning some of the new constellations. However, by dusk, the clouds were forming all around us - and as time passed, we ended up with very light winds and then

As we head west, the sun rises later and later until we change the clocks (every 15degrees). This morning the sun was just rising as my watch ended... We will probably change our clocks today though we won't pass 105W until tomorrow. Mainly because lighter mornings help me get on with my daily chores at the end of my watch :) This morning has brought a return to lighter winds. We aren't making the speeds we were the last few days, but the seastate is much calmer, so today is now the designate

It's a beautiful day out here, albeit a windier than forecast and thus the seastate is a bit than we'd like. As we pass the halfway (in distance) point, we are making very good progress now towards our destination. It's look like 14 days or so remaining, maybe less, maybe a bit more. It really all depends on the wind.

We are still seeing the occasional ship hove into view. In this case I saw it first in radar. We run the radar all the time to allow us to see squalls. The radar shows the rain falling under a squall and gives us a chance to reduce sail before we get hit, or even to avoid them altogether with a course change. So as well as keeping a visual lookout, we check the radar as part of our routine. I noticed a solid return at about 12 miles that did not look like rain. A short time later I was able to

After 2 days of variable winds, grey skies and lots of rain - we now seem to be in a more consistent SE/ESE flow with blue skies! We’ve had considerable amounts of rain - and its been quite cold on some watches. Anthony and Amanda had plenty of rain on their watch, and my morning watch yesterday was wet, as was my watch leading up to Anthony last night. This morning, we’re getting ESE/SE winds for force 4 to 5 and making around 6knots (still with a slight counter current). Sea state is a l

What a difference a couple of days makes! 3 days ago we generated a miserable 76ah from our solar panel setup which combines 1kW of panels on the hardtop with 400w on the davits (which hold the dinghy on the stern). Yesterday we generated 517ah! We also have a wind generator but with the light winds we've been getting (and as we are in general going downwind, so it sees a lower "apparent" wind), it doesn't contribute much underway. It does help at anchor but at maximum it can make 400w and th

Been a squally couple of days, but after too much W and SW wind, it has finally moved around to the East. It's still quite light, but we are making good progress south down to stronger winds, when we will turn more westerly. In the meantime, we are dodging squalls like this one. At present we have some lovely blue skies so the solar panels are doing their thing and we are charging at a rate of 60amps. This will allow us to make some water later on - not that we are short but we're balancing