Well we took a bit of a pasting over about 12 hours yesterday, as 007 says, shaken but not stirred – the sea conditions got gradually worse as the wind increased to around 25+ knots.  Matt said it’s the ugliest sea he’s ever seen – I’m not sure, we have seen some fairly ugly ones on our travels!  The waves were coming very close together (somewhere between 4 and 6 metres high, vertical with breaking tops) on the beam and we took several right over the bimini.  Despite having our full ‘conservatory’ up we still got the cockpit totally wet at times, as it came in upwards, downwards and sideways.  The surf must’ve been up on Bondi!  We were close reaching on starboard tack the whole time with a tiny mainsail and tiny genoa but still doing around 8 – 9 knots – we covered 104 miles in 12 hours!  Dinner consisted of an orange, a banana, a bag of crisps and some chocolate biscuits! As per expected we approached a trough and the wind started to die off a bit around 9pm and the seas gradually flattened off a bit.  We sailed through the night with a couple of tacks and made good progress where the gribs were predicting little wind, thanks in part to a favourable current. We put the engine on at 6.30am as the wind died, and the batteries were hungry.  We’re now motor sailing with lumpy seas expecting to go through a front around mid day bringing more wind from the north followed by a switch to strong south-westerlies tonight.  We have around 140 miles to go to Sydney so we’re doing our best to try to get as far west to keep the worst of the southerlies behind us.  We experienced a weird VHF “hotspot” where about 12 ships appeared on the AIS and VHF was crystal clear with chatter from Sydney and Port Stevens. This was 230miles west of Sydney! Normally VHF is good for 30-50 miles at best! We assume there must be an Aussie repeater station and its signals are “bouncing” out to sea. It’s all gone quiet again now so they must be bouncing over our heads!  Only a few seabirds scooting around. Looking good for arrival Tuesday am.

24 hour distance:    176 miles