Weather charts have a nice force 3 northerly wind but we have had none for 14 hours now just a whisper from the SW.  Spent from 07:00 to 14:00 no sails up with an oily sea all around.  I think this has been our longest spell of no wind at sea to date. Position: 17°44′ […]

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On route again.  I guess the sadder you are to leave, the more you enjoyed being there. It was very hard to leave Niuatoputapu. A low is passing to the south of us and the wind is due to go through the north and west before going SE.  So far it has gone from east […]

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Crossed the date line last night and lost Friday 2nd October! Wind did bend round not quite enough so motor-sailing to get in before  dark Position: 15° 46′   173° 49′ [-15.77,-173.82] 16:00 local time, GMT 03:00 Sat Oct 3rd 10 miles to Niuatoputapu Wind: SSE 20 knots Sky:  30% cloud cover

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When we talked to Karen on Red Herring at 18:00 last night it was clear we should take more food to Niuatoputapu as the supply boat hadn’t been for 5 months.  The wife of the beach pub owner drove Mary around to lots of shops to collect bags of rice and flour and change US […]

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Have added a couple of links to our boat position. This will be updated via the Yotreps reporting scheme. Should be there within about 12 hours of our report. See right hand side links. More details on www.pangolin.co.nz

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Finally the wind has died off and we motored for few hours while the sea dropped.  Back sailing now at 4 knots and the current is making us 5 over the ground.  This trip from Bora Bora has been a series of higher winds and no wind for as long as I have been monitoring […]

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Too many of the Cook islands are hard to enter with a normal draft keel boat.  There is a small harbour at [-21.204,-159.785] on Rarotonga the main island well to the south and you can get into the Northern Cook, Penrhyn [-9.024,-158].  Some boats stop at Suwarrow [-13.275,-163.127] but stopping there we would have lost […]

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We got our third ship very soon after the first two.  The three bus rule obviously works for ships as well.  This one was the Niu Polynesia on route to Apia, Samoa. We have had a stowaway since we left Oban.  He is a LEGO man that Mary found on the final tidy up of […]

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You know the rule that says when you are exasperated waiting for a bus, then three will come together.  Seems ships work to the same rule.  We are expecting our third any moment now!  We have gone for 4 days with nothing.  Today the Atlantic Crown on its way to Panama altered course to give […]

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Over night we had 25 knots which was bringing the occasional splash over into the cockpit so no dozing up on deck! Wind has dropped now to 18 knots and its excellent trade wind sailing. I have just finished Berth Leonards’s Blue Horizons which paints vivid pictures of what its like to cruise the higher […]

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