What a great day's sailing! After an uncertain start, the grey clouds disappeared, the wind backed and increased slightly - and we've been beam-reaching at well over 6 knots ever since. Although there is an increased swell (from the S & so on the beam), it hasn't been too bad & we're not getting thrown about (yet!) as we were on Tuesday..
"Nereida" is 'creaming' along - absolutely 'in the groove'. When she's sailing along like this, I often think, fronm below decks, that she's slowed right down, she is so quiet - but on, checking, I see we're going fast but smoothly - beautiful!! Whether having the staysail up has made a difference is difficult to tell - but I suspect it has. We've more sail area out lower down, so maybe not had to reef as soon as otherwise we might have had to... We've also a bit of a fair current, so our S.O.G.
has been well over 7 knots a lot of the day - at this rate, we may get to Cairns on Wednesday, rather than Thursday ... but still too early to be sure of anything where landfall is concerned.
Winds are forecast to strengthen a little to around 20kn on Monday, just for a day, and all the forecasts for the next 5 days show SE-SSE winds, maybe just S of SSE - so that all looks good!
Actually, I just checked - wind is now already SE 20knots, our boatspeed is 6.5, giving 7.3 SOG as I write this (1600 EST/0600GMT). Lovely to have such a good current helping us along!
24 hr distance run to midday (by log): 138 n.ml.
Saturday midday (EST) posn: 16 15'S, 155 32'E Distance to Cairns: 580 n.ml.