18:56.248 S  172:05.403 W01/09/09

03:00

We left after dinner at 8:30.  The wind is a pretty steady ESE 20 knots and we’re poled out.   The motion makes sleep a challenge.  Tonight we have what has become a rare phenomenon; clear skies and a nearly full moon. We’ve already ticked off 50 miles and there are less than 200 to go.

The whale swim was a great success.  We saw a new born calf which could only have been a few days old.  The babies have to breathe every couple of minutes so the mother stays fairly near the surface.  We got some shots of the baby nursing--they need something like  45 litres of milk per day—and the mother did a barrel roll very close to us.  A huge male escorted them but he was very deep.  His tail fin was twice the size of the female’s and she looked enormous.  We were in and out of the water half a dozen times as they slowly headed  away out of the bay.

Truly awesome.

12:00

Boat speed has been excellent.  We’ve done 125 miles and have another 126 to go. It’s just starting to cloud over again.  At this rate we’ll be in at 4 AM which is a few hours earlier than I thought.  But it will be the day after tomorrow as Tonga is on the other side of the date line.

Will post some more pix when we get a good connection in Neiafu.  The wi/fi connection in Nuie was slow but didn’t drop out and  cost less than £10.00 for everyone on the  boat the whole time we were there.  The band width wasn’t good enough to Skype except by text.