Commodore
September 14, 2023

Thursday 14 September – a more relaxing sunny day than yesterday

I’m writing this while on the first night shift and am pleased to see the stars tonight. It has been a much sunnier day, the sky is clear and full of stars. Another day goes by and we have not seen a single boat, not even on AIS, we really are in the middle of nowhere. Late afternoon we left French waters and crossed the line into the Cook Island territorial waters. In about 6 hours we will be entering an area with loads of Chinese Fishing trawlers that we will have to skirt around, I’m hoping it is on Rowan’s watch! It really makes me worry what these boats are doing to the ocean, how will the ocean continue to maintain itself when it is so pillaged. Rowan was telling me today, that they net krill and plankton by the ton for fertiliser and animal feed supplements. I suspect the French don’t allow these trawlers into their waters but the Cook Islands do allow them, for some sort of financial reward I would guess.

We had good winds last night and had a good sail until late morning when the wind died – we had to get the engines on for a couple of hours. Rowan’s weather predictors told him the wind would be back at 4pm and it was spot on. We got Baby Spice back up and have had a lovely comfy sail ever since with the wind in the high teens. Otherwise we are both doing well, not too tired, and should arrive in Suwarrow Saturday morning. We may get stuck there a little while as a big windy weather system is coming through next Wednesday, which we will have to sit out. There is no population living at Suwarrow, but there is a couple apparently who are the care takers of the island.