On Our way to Australia

As the other boats were departing our anchorage at Oyster Bay Resort I was at the top of the mast in the bosun's chair attaching the screecher halyard that Bill had spliced earlier that day. It was my first time ever up a mast in a bosun's chair. You get a great view from up there. We got away around 3 PM and we had to go part way down the island of Santo and then through a channel to get to the west side of the island. By the time we got to open water it was 8:30 PM. We were well behind all the other boats at this point. Chapter 2 had some problems with their depth finder so they had stopped in the channel and we were not far behind them. By the time I woke up at 3 AM, Chapter 2 was behind us. The winds had picked up to 23 to 28 knots and we had a double reef in the main. We were slowly gaining on Tahawus and BlueWind. Sometime around noon the winds died to 18 to 22 knots and we shook out a reef in the main. We slowly crept up on Tahawus and as we got close they seemed to speed up. Around 5:30 PM we finally got by them. We had been averaging 9.2 knots for the day. Sometimes our speed over ground was 6.5 and other times it was 15 knots. I was soon in bed in preparation for my 3 AM shift at the helm. Upon awaking I'm told we are 1 mile behind Bluewind. At 3:35 AM we finally passed Bluewind. At noon today No Regrets had it's first ever over 200 mile day at 225 nautical miles made good. Our average speed for the 24 hours was 9.5 knots or perhaps a bit faster. We have beautiful blue skies at the moment and the winds are starting to decrease to 15 to 20 knots. Spirits are high and we are hoping to arrive in MacKay by Sept. 1. Click on the tracker link to the right and you can check our position. -------------------------------------------------