Today has basically been a repeat of yesterday in terms of the weather; bright, sunny skies, but, although the wind eventually abated during the night to between 10 - 15 Kts and by midday was trying to get below 10 Kts, we still had the residual short, steep waves, keeping our speed at a crawl, averaging 3.9 to 4.5 Kts; painful and extremely tiring to say the least. We both definitely needed a break from all of this and the engines certainly did too.

The good news is that we’re still on track to reach Soma Bay as planned and, being in contact with Mai Tai (Kay and Lane), as well as Dr No (Erik), two yachts ahead of us, but whose crew we have never met in person, has been extremely helpful in providing details of various anchorages they have used and will definitely allow us to day hop to Port Suez after Soma Bay, thereby avoiding the scenario we’ve endured for the few days of bashing to weather and crawling along at a snail’s pace.

The morning and evening nets with Talulah Ruby III, Golden Spirit and Kandiba are also still a pleasant source of “company” as we all soldier on.

By this afternoon, we had a favourable current again and enjoyed a SOG (Speed Over Ground) above 5 Kts; definitely a cause for celebrations! We’ll take what we can get!

By tonight, we were “flying”, or so it seemed, enjoying a SOG of 6.2 Kts; it wasn’t just the both of us that was looking forward to our arrival, Paw Paw was too!