.: One day to go.....

This is a special day for me as it was my Mom’s birthday. She has been gone 19 years but I still miss her and wish she was here to talk to everyday.

Thinking of you Mom….enjoy your birthday rainbow

We had a much nicer evening in Alofi than we would have if we’d stayed in the main anchorage. We enjoyed the sunset, and a nice cold gin and tonic.

Sunset at Alofi

We up anchored at 5:00 a.m. this morning just as it was starting to get light. We set up our self-steering monitor that we were able to use for the crossing for the past 24 hours as we were able to sail the whole way.

Our monitor on duty!

It was a much more comfortable tack coming back; however, there were still large swells of about 9 feet with waves topping them between 1 – 2 feet. They were also very confused and came at us every 1 -3 seconds which made for another wild and wet ride with water crashing over the cockpit.

One of many churches as we were heading out of Futuna

The worst part of the trip was just after sunset. We saw a large fishing boat heading towards us but we couldn’t make out the navigation lights since it was lit up like a Christmas tree with wraparound red lights – making it impossible to see whether it was coming straight for us, going ahead of us or dropping below us. We tried to hail them a number of times on the radio, but no luck. The boat kept coming closer and closer until we were directly on a collision path. Peter immediately tacked off, but this was really disorientating since it was pitch black and the lights of the boat were blaring at us. After we tacked and made a run for it, we thought we were in the clear, but it seemed like the boat was playing chicken with us and starting heading towards us again on our new course. We had to take evasive action again and finally we managed to put some distance between us.

Needless to say it was a very scary situation and the closest we have ever come to an at sea collision. Then just 15 minutes later another fishing boat appeared and we thought we’d have to do more of the same. It turned out to be two Taiwanese long lead fishing boats as they began talking to one another on the radio. Very frustrating that they ignored us when we made repeated calls to them on the radio. A very near miss! It took us about an hour to calm down and settle in for another long, pitch black night stretching before us.

Peter finally relaxing while I’m on watch.

This morning greeted us with an amazing sunrise and a much more comfortable beam reach, rather than almost on the nose. Most of the night it was over 20 knots with us clipping along between 6 – 7.5 knots. We are now within the more protected waters along the channel and between the reefs, so I’m able to be below typing this while Peter is keeping a sharp eye out for reefs. We expect to arrive back in Fiji to check in tomorrow morning.

Morning sunrise….