With a good weather window we spent our last Paanga on cheeseburgers and cokes at Big Mamma’s yacht club and set off from Nuka’Alofa. The skies were sunny with 20 knots of breeze. As we got out of the lee of Tonga’Tapu the breeze built through the day until we were seeing 25-30 knots with gusts into the low 30’s. We set our sails conservatively on our 3rd reef points and were still making good boat speed hovering around 8 knots, occasionally seeing the knot meter hit 10 knots in some of the gusts.
The ride is a little uncomfortable with large seas hitting our beam and occasionally breaking on the boat giving Delos a saltwater bath. We think spending two months in the calm waters of Tonga made us a little soft- we’re feeling a little green and finding it hard to do much onboard. Luckily we planned ahead and bought pre-cooked food for the passage. We had a lasagne for dinner and the comfort food did wonders.
Boats 50 miles ahead of us are reporting 15-20 knots on the SSB net so that’s a good sign. Hopefully we’ll see the breeze and seas moderate sometime during the night.
We did a decent run of 186 miles for our first 24 hours. Only 850 more to go!