Finally, finally, after 37 hours of motoring, we found some wind last night and thankfully switched off the engine at 17.20. We had some very pleasant sailing through the night but at 05.50 this morning the wind gave up and the engine's now back on. However we are only about 4 hours from Minerva Reef and we're hoping the wind will return to allow us to sail the last bit. We overtook two smaller boats, Trumpeter and Donella, in the night; it was a typically small-world moment as Donella's crew Darrel and Sonia bought our old mainsail stackpack cover from us in Opua when we got our new one and, after some tlc with the sewing machine are very pleased with it.
The slight tedium of motoring yesterday was enlivened, but not in a good way, by a discovery of a water leak in one of the connectors in our pressurised fresh water circuit. The first we knew of it was one of us happening to see water pumping out from our automatic bilge pump and we reckon about 200 litres of precious fresh water was lost; at least the bilges got a rinse. We shut down the pressure pump and can access water via two hand pumps in the galley and forward heads sinks but when we get into the anchorage we'll try to effect a temporary repair with self-sealing rubber tape. We daren't take the fitting apart in case it breaks completely so we'll leave that major surgery until we arrive in Fiji; the fittings are domestic push-fit ones on hard plastic hoses so they may (we hope) be available at a plumbers merchants there.
Eyes are peeled for the first sight of the reef ahead, though we'll likely only see it when we are very close. We'll try and post a photo of it once we are safely in.
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