Day 2 Bora Bora to Tonga via the Cooks – sailing slowly

Day 2 Saturday 9th and some lumpy seas combined with the light winds were making it hard work for the poor parasailor (our downwind spinnaker sail). It sits there trying its best to bulge out and power us forward but most of the time it’s collapsing as a wave hits the boat before it refills with a little wind. Every now and then it collapses, inverts itself and we steer up towards the wind to let it gently blow out again. The presence of a cloud gets us excited as we know it will have a little more wind at its edges. The wind speed averages 3-5 knots and we are doing between 3-4 knots speed over the ground. Slow but steady. We have no choice as it’s a while before we see fuel again so we are trying to preserve it before turning on the engine.

The forecast had said no wind after 2pm and it was 3pm when we fired the engine up. Down came the parasailor for a bit of rest from all its flapping. 5pm we detected ripples on the water – a sure sign of some wind. Then we had to get our skates on and get the parasailor up as the sun sinks pretty quickly from 5.30pm. It was a good call and we even had a brief spell of sailing at 5 knots! All of ten minutes!

During the day we passed time reading, sleeping, talking, playing games and trying to keep the parasailor up. We talked about the up-and-coming ‘hurricane season’ when Adina comes out of the water in Vana’atu. We hope to find work but where remains the talking point. Ideally Vana’atu but it looks like that may not be easy so we’re a little worried. Luckily we have a friend there who is trying to see what he can do.

And of course we play games. Our favourite is monopoly deal (a card version of monopoly) and scores were even for the day but Tom took the backgammon 2-1. The instructions with the game were rather brief and we’re not quite sure how you finish getting the pieces off the board. Perfect scores to get your piece off we assume. But then what happens if you have one piece that needs a 2 to get off the board but you throw a 2 and a 5. According to our rules you have to use the 5 as if you cannot use both numbers you must use the highest.

Into the night and we watched for clouds knowing they would keep us going. A really lovely full moon helped cumulus cloud spotting. Forecast for Sunday says we’ll be motoring but we’ll keep pushing that parasailor. Wonder if we’ll be there in time for Christmas? Not a problem if not; there is a Christmas pud buried somewhere…