The first 24 hours and it's raining hard

We left Levuka at local midday yesterday (00.00 UTC) and after a slightly bumpy start made good progress through the night. Our current position is:

 

Update at 00.00UTC Saturday 25th October:

 

Position: 19 degrees 33 mins south, 177 degrees, 17 mins east

Wind: Easterly 12-14 knots

Boat: 5.9 knots at 207 degrees true

Sea: 2m south-easterly swell

Pressure: 1014hPa

Cloud cover: 100% with rain and drizzle

Mileage covered in past 24 hours: 153nm

 

Unfortunately at about 9.00am local time this morning we sailed into the weather trough that's sitting just below Fiji and suddenly had very heavy rain (with a circle of visibility of no more than 200m radius ) and wind guts up to 30 knots. Lots of sail changes required but things have settled down again and we are making steady progress southward. The forecast suggests we'll get some light winds in a couple of days as we hit the centre of a passing high pressure system so we'll have to motor through that and then there's a weather front crossing below us that will bring more rain and adverse winds but nothing too unpleasant we hope.

 

As ever we are both adapting to the loss of sleep and constant motion of the boat but Maunie is revelling in the conditions.