Ready to go

No trip to town today. Ben and I used the morning to clean up the starboard hull and both props. After doing this I decided to set the first reef into the mainsail as that is what we’re likely to need tomorrow. Bad news. The lower part of the sail got caught in the reefing pulley near the mast and tore. So another set of sewing, taping and ironing was required to sort this out. Fortunately, as this was low down I was able to perform the patch without removing the sail. If this becomes an issue while sailing we’ll just have to keep the first reef in which, given the winds ahead of us, will be what we’re doing a fair bit.I’d invited all the cruisers setting off tomorrow to a 3pm meeting to have any final discussion on the weather and to agree nets. We have agreed to use the morning ‘Penguin’ net as our means for checking in with each other. This net has almost run out of steam as it was down to the boats recently heading down to New Zealand to man it and they’ve mostly arrived. Four of us (Attitude, Us, Imagine and Sea Mist) have agreed to run the net for the next week or so and hand it over once we’ve arrived. 

Helen has polished off her two year perspective (which was also accidentally truncated when it was last posted) so the earlier version has been deleted and will be resent shortly.

I have finally uploaded my photos and updated prior blog entries.  The ones with new albums can be found on our ‘Recently Updated‘ link.  I’ve also figured out how to post messages containing pictures via our HF radio so we may have some more interesting blogs ahead.

Everything is now ready for the off in the morning. The dinghy has had everything removed and is now tied to the davits. Jacklines are installed. We’ve made spare water and topped off the tanks. The genset has been retested. Nothing more to do.

In the morning I’ll do one final weather check and decide when to leave. It’s looking more and more like we’ll leave before I run the net at 7:30 as I want to make good speed as a low pressure system is now developing north of us and coming down in a few days. We want to be well away from it when it passes through this area.

Chances are our next blog will be while at sea.

Bugger – I’ve just realized I still have the washing up to do.