Another vessel

Another Vessel

Position: 12D59'.971S 157D34'.234W

323 nautical miles left to sail to Suwarrow

1006 nautical miles left to sail to Vavau in Tonga

Tuesday August 16 - I was on watch this morning and saw our first vessel in 4 days which was a bit of a surprise. It was a very noisy and rusty white metal boat that looked liked something crossed between a small ferry and a fishing vessel. I actually heard the boat before I saw it chugging down the starboard side of us about 2 miles away. We turn the radar off during the day now to save our batteries which seem to be getting more and more depleted every day. Yesterday we had made good progress towards Suwarrow averaging between 6 and 7 knots. During the night the winds dropped off leaving us with slower speeds again today and unhappy sails. We need to be in Tonga by August 26 so we can prepare Faraway for my brother and his family's visit on August 30. As the winds are so unpredictable it looks like we may need to pass by Suwarrow so we can arrive in Tonga on time. As we inch closer to Tonga we are realizing just how close we really are to Australia now and for the first time we have been able to fold our chart of the Pacific Ocean to the left side that shows Australia in the grid. We will also pass the International Date Line soon and will lose a day which doesn't really help with our timeline or morale or keeping track of the days which we seem to have problems with. Our fruit and vegetable stores are holding out well on this trip and it will be a few more days before we have ripe bananas (a whole bunch of ripe bananas at once by the look of things). Unfortunately our cooking gas has almost run out as we were unable to purchase any gas bottles in Bora Bora so we have to go very easy with cooking and baking. Our microwave is broken as well but I'm happy to report that the electric kettle and toaster still work. If the gas runs out and we want to cook dinner it will have to be on the propane gas BBQ on the aft deck but this can only be done by Ian when there isn't a lot of wind! We actually had BBQ pizza as a trial run on our first day out at sea on this trip and it was fine except for the black burnt bits that went overboard. I'm not really looking forward to cold beans on toast but I guess things could be a lot worse and it's amazing how things get easily put into perspective when you don't have a lot of the options that would be available to you on land. After looking at the chart to obtain our current position I can see that we are being pushed way south of Suwarrow by the wind and the current. It is most likely that we will continue on now for 9 more days or so directly to Tonga.