Day 11: Thursday 19 August

Sunset on Thursday

Started out slow again but finished with a roar. Rain, drizzle, little lifts of wind from the SW then turning East, more rain. Not much to write home about..... a couple of movies..... Great to get some feedback on the blog from people too - thanks!

At last the south east trade winds kicked in as expected, with a steady breeze around 10 knots encouraging us to raise the spinnaker and get our speed up.  Olive Andrews and her whale research team Oma Tafua in Niue, are waiting anxiously for us to get there so any additional speed we can get is important. We are now on a straight run to Niue bearing 30 degrees!

Birdlife is almost nonexistent, apart from one booby.  Most albatrosses don’t extend into tropical latitudes and petrels and shearwaters are far less prevalent here than in temperate latitudes.  Still no whales and they are apparently late arriving in Niue (email from Olive) possibly due to warmer than usual sea temperatures. Maybe we will arrive together, we have heard distant humpbacks on the hydrophone.

Humpback whales migrate annually to tropical latitudes to mate and calve in July/August. The Niue Government has already established the waters of Niue as a whale sanctuary and now it is important to find out what other species of cetaceans are using the region as well as investigate the Pacific population of threatened humpback whales here. Humpbacks were reduced by whaling to less than 10% of their original population and recovery has been slow. Our boat will be used as a survey vessel to assist with surveys of cetaceans in Niue, especially the humpbacks.

As the night progressed the wind speed continued to rise and by the time I got up for my watch at 3, Gerry was struggling to hold the boat as we surfed down the waves with full rig at 18-20 knots wind speed. John and Gerry dropped the spinnaker, and raised a no. 1 jib, while I helmed. Even with the spinnaker down I got the record for fastest boat time so far 11.2 knot. Whoopee!  Stayed on helm but very heavy – good work out for the arms and shoulders and watched the dawn arrive.

Midday position 25 48.16 S, 173 35.9 W