We left Bora Bora at sunrise on Sunday, headed Vava’u in Tonga. We are routing north of Maupihaa atoll first, in case the forecast turns nasty for the Cook Islands /Tonga. That way we can head for Samoa instead. The wind was initially light, but filled in to around 15-18 knots so we were making good miles. With a swell below 2m and evenly spaced it was very pleasant.

We are dealing with faults on both our DC-DC chargers, so we have to manage power closely. Fortunately, it was quite sunny, and our solar panels managed to get the batteries back to 100% every day.

The wind died just before 10AM Tuesday, marking the arrival of the rain front associated with a low-pressure system hundreds of miles south of our position. The 9AM weather update also showed potential nasty weather moving in over the Tonga area within 24 hours of our predicted arrival time. Bobbing and rolling at 2 knots in barely a breath of wind was not an option, so the motor was started, and we were soon chugging along at around 5 knots towards our destination.

In the afternoon we bagged the staysail and stowed both poles, as downwind sailing is not in our future for the next few days. We motored for almost last 20 hours but, on the upside, the remaining functional but erratic DC-DC charger kept pumping out a steady if disappointing 30 Amps (from our 115 Amp alternator).

The forecast rain started in the late afternoon on Wednesday (why always just as it is about to get dark??) and became torrential with gusty headwinds to 25 knots around 10:30PM. The captain was summoned and, after surveying the scene for an hour, declared that there was nothing to be done, leaving the first mate, by now in life jacket, to keep the ship steady. The rain came and went all night, accompanied by gusty southerly wind. Some diffuse lightning was also visible to the north, but the radar showed nothing except a large cell more than 36 miles to the north.

At daybreak on Thursday the rain eased, and the wind abated to around 5 knots (of course, it was now daylight), revealing a pretty flat sea. “It won’t stay like this”, we said, and sure enough, things started going downhill shortly after. The forecast was for SSE winds at 12 knots, steadily increasing to 16 knots through the day. The reality on the water was a rapid increase to around 20 knots, gusting 25 of winds from the SSW, i.e. forward of the beam. The sea state also rapidly deteriorated into the “washing machine” state. In addition, we the difference between our heading and actual course was 10 to 15 degrees, and it appeared we were making a lot of leeway, requiring a further turn into the wind. We were soon crashing into and over waves with only the triple reefed main and half the small headsail. The winds were gusty too, with even the small sail plan groaning and propelling us to over 8 knots during the gusts.

In last night’s update a deep and extensive low-pressure system south of us had materialised, with the forecast high being squashed to a small ridge. Dave, the skipper on Warrior, who is 100 miles south/ahead of us, sent us an update from his onshore weather router pointing out that the low is visible on the satellite imagery and would torment us for a while longer but that the impacts would abate over the next 24 hours.

It was difficult to keep any sort of pace up in these conditions as Sunny Spells would just launch herself off the top of each wave and crash back into the water with every passing swell. We had to slow down and turn downwind a bit to preserve boat and sanity.

Conditions very slowly improved through the night, mostly as the waves became more regular and our wind angle improved ever so slightly. It is now Friday morning, and the wind is still gusting 26 knots on the beam, so we are not out of the woods just yet.