Again today started at midnight and all three of us were out on deck with the music cranking and resembling something close to a party boat without the disco lights. As we had building northerly winds coming out of the Wellington heads we had full sail up doing 7kn downwind and as soon as we cleared Barrett Reef we started to head more south-west to allow us to get more in the direction we wanted while also getting southing to avoid the Karori rip which can flow up to 5.25kn so its advisable to keep clear of that. We were now on a beam reach making constant 5.5kn+ under sail alone and heading toward Port Underwood which is far further south than we wanted but took what we can due to the wind direction. The night seemed long and was cold, all three of us spent the night in the cockpit watching the stars, snoozing until we got a wave over the front and soaked us all and woke those sleeping with a hell of a shock. I think we all had had enough by the time first light came around and we were praying for some sun to warm our chilled bodies, we had managed to sneak a bit further north and were just off the Tory Channel entrance when the sun came up, we even got to watch the first ferries come from and enter the channel. Now the problem was the wind was directly N and we wanted to head, yep you guessed, N - so instead of tacking back and forth all day to make the ground we needed it was away with the sails and motor straight into the 20kn northerly until we could clear Cape Koamaru and turn to port and make our way toward Pelorus sounds. We chugged along for what seemed endless hours as we make the 9nm journey to the Cape, barely missing a rock which stuck a foot or two out of the water, then it was past 'The Brothers' where we met some very strong tides and we were doing 5+kn of boat speed but only about 1kn SOG (speed over ground) until we got away from The Brothers, then we got into some more interesting water ripping around the Cape making all sorts of weird waves and eddies so I was thankful when we cleared that and were heading into the Marlbrough Sounds heads. Next hurdle was clearing Cape Jackson which was the port headland to the Marlbrough Sounds and propbably the last major hurdle to clear before a straight line dash to our predetermined stop for the night. We motored north again and cleared the cape and the big reef area that extends a mile or so north of the head then it was a beam reach all the way to Annie Bay where we took Mana Cruising Club's mooring ball for a well deserved feed, relax, dvd stop and one hell of a good nights sleep.
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