The breeze eased off yesterday to next to nothing, and the forecast was showing a southerly coming up at around midnight.
We were 175 nm northeast of the reefs at Fiji that stretch all the way down the eastern side. If we had continued on our same course, we would have had strong headwinds going through the pass and would have been in a poor position when we exited the reefs to sail through Fiji.
So, with full tanks and trusty new water pumps on both engines, it was time to do some strategic motoring. You may have seen the course change as we started positioning ourselves for the breeze, and then another course change when the wind started.
It was a few hours earlier than expected, but it didn't really affect our overall plan.
It was pouring rain almost all night, with gusty winds up to around 25 knots, but it has settled down now to 18 knots from the SSE. I'm hoping it starts to come around to the south as we get into Fiji waters. We also had a bit of an adventure with the chartplotter at 3am, which was a little disconcerting. In previous rain, it's decided to get a little confused and thinks the raindrops on the touchscreen are fingers, and the display starts scrolling through menus and options and adjusting settings.
Well, last night, as the rain stopped and we were heading towards the maze of reefs, it decided to go into what can only be described as 'unreadable mode', and it was impossible to make sense of the display.
We tried everything we could think of, and it refused to enter 'readable mode'. The biggest issue was that the menu button wouldn't menu.
We finally had to reset the entire thing and start from scratch, but at least we can see it now.
It's just coming daylight and we have 20 nm until we approach the reefs. "Reefs" sounds like something Jacques Cousteau would say, and I think a better description would be a razor-sharp, semi-submerged labyrinth of boat-eating rocks.