We had the made the choice yesterday to sail in between the Fiji islands. To our big surprise, Puma followed us, which we hadn't expected.

We think we will lose out against the boats out in the east, and most likely we have to play catch up after this passage, not much we can do about it.

The sky has been extremely clear tonight.  OK, we still had our occasional shower, but mainly a view on billions of stars.

So the game has started, we are short tacking, and soon we will enter the Kalou passage (round the island passage).  One thing for sure, it will be a beautiful sight, as the sun will come up soon. Of course we have been looking a bit ahead as well, and the southern ocean doesn't look vey promising yet as there are westerlies, hopefully the models are not correct, but if this is the case, than this leg might take well over 40 days.

Food wise we are ok, fuel we think we have enough, but the stop in Rio becomes way to short.

Cheers,

Bouwe Bekking - Skipper