Day 5 - Very Steady as She Goes

After a lovely day's sailing yesterday, the wind quit work just before midnight so we motored through the night and most of today. Apart from the Yanmar Rumble, it's been a good day, though, with bright sunshine and calm seas so we were able to do some boat jobs that would be less fun if it was lumpy.

 

The main task was 'in flight refuelling' since Maunie's main tank was down to about one quarter this morning. We have six additional 20-litre jerry cans of diesel stowed deep in the bilges in hard-to-access lockers so we dug them out and transferred the fuel. Diesel is messy, oily stuff and you just don't want a spillage but we are able to access the top of the main tank, in the floor of our sleeping cabin, and can unscrew a filler cap there rather than having to heave the heaving cans onto the deck to the main filler. Using a neat syphon tube which which runs through an airtight bung to fit in the neck of the jerrycan we can pressurise the tank by blowing through a breather tube in the same bung and then let the fuel syphon out without danger of spillage. Much better than sucking on the syphon tube and hoping to avoid a mouthful of diesel!

 

Refuelling completed we were also able to dig out our duvet (unused since May) and warm clothes and seaboots for the colder weather ahead. Speaking of which, the forecast does still suggest some pretty lumpy seas and strong winds on Tuesday night as we approach Ape Reinga, the northern most tip of NZ, so we are still sailing SW to put ourselves in as good a position as possible to face the strong south-westerlies.

 

Knowing that it'll be nasty ahead makes us enjoy the current calm conditions all the more. At about 5.00pm the breeze finally returned, from almost directly behind us, so we hoisted the spinnaker and are now sailing along at about 4.5 - 5 knots. All being well the wind will build a little during the night and the clear sky and bright moon suggests that we won't get any rain squalls that make spinnaker sailing at night stressful. We'll let you know tomorrow!