Saturday 21 May Fiji to NZ day 9

It's David's birthday today but apart from making him a cup of tea for breakfast and giving him his cards there's not a lot of celebrating to do. We plan to make up for this when we arrive in the promised land of Fiji. We're still flying along ahead of the wind and the waves. Daytime is fine – one sleeps and the other keeps watch for squall patches and reads.­

Behind you!

Doing our calculations for estimated arrival time looks like we could be in as eary as tomorrow afternoon. The question we ask ourselves is 'arrive at weekend and be liable for overtime charges from Customs or slow down to arrive Monday morning'. We opt for a sunset Sunday arrival.

One last overnighter in what will be our second longest passage since we began cruising. The longest trip was 18 days from Galapagos to Marquesas. Last Nvember it took us 8 days to travel from Tonga to NZ. This will be 10 days at sea although we did stop for 36 hours to allow bad weather to clear ahead of us. Whatever. I'll be pleased to arrive and have a proper sleep.