First Night in the Roaring Forties

We crossed 40 Deg S latitude today, home of the "Roaring Forties"! The wind has slowly backed from being Easterly last night to Northerly through the day and is now blowing from the NNW about 20 to 25 kts. That gives us a nice fast reach to sail onto the Southern Tip of New Zealand. It also means that we are not thumping into the swell any longer but cork-screwing about due to an almost quarterly swell. It has been raining on & off since morning with a thick cloud cover making for a cold gloomy day and a colder dark night.
        
          Saw a Ship's AIS icon on my chart plotter after lunch at about 3 Nm. Couldn't sight him visually and realized that I was yet to fix the VHF MMB set that had stopped functioning the day after leaving Freo. If the Ship wanted to call me or warn me there was no way he could, so got down to figuring out the loose wire that was the culprit. Not so easy on a jumping boat and with my terrible skills as an electrician! First managed to shut off the Chart plotter by pulling some wire, cause for real concern! Then managed to create enough sparking to panic and switch the mains off only to switch off the auto pilot with them! Ran out to get the boat under control, got the auto pilot going and spent the better part of the day sorting out the connections. Thankfully everything came on line by evening. Just another day on board!