What a great day’s sailing – we had lightish winds in the morning which picked up to 10 – 12 knots by lunchtime.  Close reaching on port tack with perfectly smooth seas – fabulous.  Fishing today consisted of trying to get a piece of pumice – there’s quite a lot of it about from a volcanic eruption on one of the Keramadec islands to the south of us.  A reminder of the area we’re in (we had a couple of mild earth quakes whilst we were in Tonga.  Spotted a couple of whales but by the time we got closer and cameras at the ready they had dived down. 

Still much talk on the VHF and SSB radios about the impending low.  We have just passed the Minerva Reef (23.36.265S; 178.56.665W) – typical we arrived there before daylight but as the sun came up there was not really much to see anyway!  Just a reef (I guess mainly below the sea) in the middle of nowhere.  There’s also another one 20 miles to the south of this one.  We’re now officially out of the tropics as we passed below the tropic of Capricorn last night.  Definitely feels chillier!  Anyway back to the weather – the latest girbs seem to show the low appearing over Fiji on Wednesday then moving south east so we don’t want to be in the Minerva Reef as it looks as though it’s going to centre over there.  We’re continuing on and hopefully will be able to make a good speed to get to the west of it.  The wind is now up at around 18 knots and it’s just got a bit bouncier.

24 hour distance: 180 miles