Last night was a fairly easy night with steady winds of 20 knots blowing in from the east.  I ended up sailing a slight North West course yesterday to try to stay in the winds as long as possible.  Throughout the night my sleep was interrupted by 2 vessels that only showed up on the radar when they were within 2 nm of me.  The weird thing was that they appeared to be fishing boats or maybe even a small cruise liner as they had so many lights on them but I was unable to find any navigation lights.  It struck me as a bit odd so I decided to remain on deck until I was well clear.

Well it has been a little bit of a slow day for me today after staying awake until past 2am last night until I had cleared the last of the Torris Straight.  The winds were holding at 20 knots last night and there was a sharp swell following along behind.  I was quite relieved to have finished by passage and be heading back out to open waters and I was so looking forward to some sleep.  

So last night I was making my approaches to the Pandora Passage which is the main shipping entry at the very top of the Great Barrier Reef.  I arrived an hour after sunset with 30-35 knots of wind and 3-4 meter swell.  On the entry there is a 10nm gap between the 2 outer reefs and then almost 200nm of passages that I needed to follow through all the inner islands and around all the reefs and rocks.

Well last night the winds maintained 30 knots and the swell continued to build so that now I am sailing in 5 meter swell.  It was also a rather sad night for me as I had a new visitor to the boat.  At about 11 pm there was a thwak on the deck of the boat so I went on deck to take a look and found a lovely little brown sea bird cradling its damaged wing hunched on the back deck.  It was about the size of a large pigeon with a lovely long slender beak.  It didnt take a genius to figure out that it had hit the - becoming now infamous - wind generator.

Last night was fairly uneventful as I was in open waters and managed have consistent winds throughout the evening.  The swell has picked up a bit so it was quite rolley through the night making sleep a little difficult and at sunrise I woke to find that shark reef was 20nm almost dead ahead.  I altered course 20 degrees to port and then carried on.  So for most of today I have been sailing along the edge of a reef system and am just clearing the last reef now.

Things have been going well on-board as the winds have steadied from the East.  Last night I was just entering a section of reef nick named the outer reef and needed to navigate through this over night.  It was a fairly simple task as the sections of reefs were more than 30nm apart making for lots of clear water to sail through.  I am now just about to sail clear of the final reef called Holmes Reefs before being back in open waters for anther 2 days.  

Finally I am sailing in some steady trade winds and managed for the first time since I have been at sea to get over 4 hours sleep.  I feel amazing...this is what rested feels like...  With the steady winds and the open water I increased my naps to 30 minutes and only needed to go on deck once to alter course 10 degrees to give some reef a little more room.  I also amazingly managed to get to bed relatively early so I think I actually likely managed 6-7 hours of sleep.