26 58.159S :156 36.856E
Progress had been made at the expense of diesel owing to insufficiency of breeze - right direction and velocity. So motor we must. A 5-6kn average is our ambition and required to ensure that we are traveling within our 'weather window' . What lurks beyond the 7 day weather horizon nobody knows hence motor must supplement to top up the average.
The Bloke spent considerable time attempting to sort out the AIS. He confirmed that the aerial was not the issue by plugging in our masthead VHF aerial. Nope. No change. The nav table instrument panel went up and down. From the cockpit only grunting and the pinging of the control buttons were audible. In the finish the Bloke was not convinced of an actual issue. We were on a vast ocean and there wasn't another boat to pick up for 35nm - roughly the range of our aerial. We double checked that our VHF was still OK by calling Grace 7, who'd originally alerted us to a potential issue. A very crackly reply confirmed that the radio worked and they were very far away. This was to remain a poser until we could confirm a vessel in range and see what showed up.
3 consecutive nights of curries may not have been the best plan. The Bloke blocked up the heads. Luckily we have 2. More hours of occupation for the Bloke. He does so hate things to be out of order - his own plumbing or the boats'.
We tried every sail combo to get a bit more lift but even Big Red, our spinnaker, couldn't deliver. We decided to stick to our plan of following the Predictwind ECMF wind model so the iron spinnaker it would be to get the 'easting' needed early to complete this passage.
The air was dry and barometer stable at 1015hPa. Good night!
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