Winds and storms

The Manua Islands of American Samoa are a set of fuzzy blobs on the
horizon, away to the south of us now. I didn't think we'd be able to
see them at this distance (about 30nm according to the chart) but they
are high islands formed from volcanic activity, over 2000m to the
highest peak.

We've had an odd assortment of winds today, more reminiscent of sailing
in Middle Harbour than in the trade wind belt. We started with the
usual easterly, with a forecast predicting it would swing north easterly
during the day. In fact it started out by dying off, then coming from
due west, and progressing around through south west and south, all quite
light so we motored for a few hours. It's now due easterly again and
we're running with the poled out genoa and the main with 3 reefs sheeted
in tight to reduce the roll. There's still a significant swell although
much lighter than yesterday.

We spent most of the morning dodging storms, which we seemed to do
successfully. We could see quite a bit of activity around us but the
worst we got was a calm between two of them, and the tail end of a bit
of rain.

At the current speed we should make Apia late tomorrow (Wednesday)
afternoon, but I'm still betting on the wind to die off a bit which
means we'll more likely arrive on Thursday morning. I'm looking
forwards to a beer at Aggie Grey's.