Tuesday 7 October – wind and squalls

What a relief to get wind after a day of motoring yesterday. It was a nice wind in the mid teens in the morning, comfy enough for me to do some more sewing on the awning. We briefly had Pinkz up but then took her down and packed her away in the locker as Rowan was watching big squalls and storms on Predict wind. We also put a reef in the main sail, to be fully prepared.

In the afternoon the wind picked up with a big squall, we hit a top wind speed of 36.2 knots and a boat speed of 18.7 knots surfing down a wave. Boy were we pleased we had put a reef in the sail. The big wind churned up the sea quickly, it is the amazing thing about PolePole she is so comfortable in big winds and sea. There was no panic as we reached over 18 knots of boat speed. The wind stayed in the mid twenties and we zoomed along at speed. We got quite far ahead of the other two boats, but they are both doing well, and seemed to miss the big squall that hit us.

The afternoon sped by as we chatted to Han and Noah, not about wedding plans as one might think, but about a pitch for a filming job. All very exciting for them. We officially entered Indonesian water in the afternoon so we are making good progress, Rowan thinks we may chop off a day of our passage at this speed.

I did the first shift until midnight, we were goose winging as the wind was right behind us, it stayed in the mid teens. I had to negotiate a squall on one side, and two cargo ships approaching from opposite directions on the other side, giving me very little room for manoeuvre as the squall kept pushing me towards the ship. Luckily it passed by a mile, as the squall took off in another direction. That kept me on my toes! By the time Rowan came up around midnight there was loads of terrible lightning on the main land, nasty looking forked lightning. We gained an hour as we have moved through another time zone. I was very happy to be going to sleep as the storms were brewing.