Day 3

I saw two ships yesterday, one in the evening, heading north, and one at night heading south. Around dawn the wind changed and I dropped the jib. I found on my last trip that if the wind is just aft of the beam, it balances best with just the main (as when the jib catches it pulls it up to much, and the self steering only corrects slowly. But it's okay, if it's windy you are still going 5 knots like this. In the afternoon the wind died down and came back from the South South East, not ideal. So have been bashing to windward all afternoon. Before leaving, I took the jib into hackland and did the little repairs that I felt needed doing. I didn't want to have to repair it at sea. Tangaroa had other ideas, because today I tore the jib. It was on deck all day, and when the wind was light one time I decided to raise it again, not realizing it was stuck under the spinnaker pole. I should have gone forward to investigate rather than just haul on the winch! now it's got a meter long tear in it. It's forecast to be light tomorrow after noon, so I'll fix it then... I set the small heavy jib instead, and the wind picked up anyway.

Today I past the point of being at sea for 48 hours. I wasn't feeling sick but I didn't have much appetite, eventually it came back. I think tomorrow I should really be getting into the swing (or rock) of things.

Unsure if I will make it to wellington in 7 days or not. I was definitely going fast yesterday, but the forecast the next couple of days has the wind changing from north to south and back several times. That's sure to slow me down.