uphill from here on!

Well the first two days back at sea have been relatively plain sailing compared to the west coast. We have been cruising along with anywhere between 15 and 20 knots of wind doing anywhere between 6 and 10 knots of boat speed. So far not too much rain either. From the weather forecasts it looks like we might have to weather a gale past wellington but in my opinion it is more favorable than being stuck with no wind which is what might happen to us tomorrow.

Apart from that im not sure there is much more to report. It is slowly getting warmer but the temperature still seems to plummit at night. Christchurch has crappy cell reception, we picked up 3g off Dunedin but nothing off banks peninsula, oh well.

I did sprain my ankle an hour before the start of leg 3, Dad was on hand to strap up my foot and stick it in a boot, but the pain seems to have subsided. I think dad was more worried about having to do everything than about my ankle hahaha.

As we left Peter and Donni and their sister Wendy took it upon themselves to resupply our food stores. We took on board 3 lots of home made cookies, 1 tub of fudge, a cooked meal (mince and pasta) a litre of juice a jar of home made apple jam, oh and a packet of muffins from Gwen (a key lady in the Stewart Island community). So I dare say we will not starve between here and napier, in fact the real challange is eating it all before it goes off.

Tonight we had dolphins for about 30 minutes. they look like little torpedoes in the flossforessance (I havent figured out to spell that yet) [Ed: Let alone say it properly! "Phosphorescence"!!].  They gave me a big fright as they came up right behind the boat and then surfaced with a loud psshhhhhh ! I thought it might have been a whale.

I'm sure there is a book of sailors proverbs out there, well I have one to add, drawn from the frustration of light wind sailing. Boats are like fat people, they are slow to get going, hard to slow down, and when the going gets tough they chafe all over.

Well I think that's me. It's going to be hard coming home and having to adjust to a normal bed time. I'm so used to sleeping when I want, eating when im hungry, going to the bathroom whenever I need to. It will be an interesting adjustment.

More to follow tomorrow, I personally hope it is just as uneventful. right now we have the spinnaker up and we have already rounded up several times today (I think I have pulled it down and put it up on 3 separate occasions in the last 24 hours). All part of the fun.

Matthew

PS i did smother the mast seal with silicon sealer before we started this leg, but its ridiculous whenever i solve one leak another just seems to pop up out of nowhere, at the moment i am sitting on a very wet chart table cushion. grrrrrrrrrr
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