The surprise of the clear skies last night was accentuated by us being attracted from our beds by a fireworks display over the harbour.  Fireworks are one of those things of which I don't approve but cannot help my self from watching and enjoying.  After that we slept well until sunrise soon after four this morning.

Now was the time to make a decision.  The weather forecast for today was dire but so was the one for tomorrow - both being heavy rain and and north easterly winds of around thirty kilometers and hour gusting up to seventy kilometers an hour.  Although I was avoiding complaining about winds yesterday, headwinds like this were guaranteed to be unpleasant. 

We decided to push on to Wakkanai and in the end the wind was less of a problem than the rain.  For most of the way northwards the wind came as much from the side as it did from the front and the gusts were not half as bad as expected.  However, the rain came chucking down and we got absolutely drenched.  With about twenty five kays to go we came upon a rest area cum bird watching post that had a gas heater burning inside.  We stripped off all our outer clothing as well as shoes and socks and spent half an hour drying ourselves and warming up.

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Despite my complaints, today's route could have been really enjoyable on a different day.  It was mostly flat along the coastline, with large island volcano of Rushiri-Fuji (of which we had some good views yesterday) hidden entirely by the bad weather.  Birding would also have been good.  We picked up a small flock of Red Phalaropes in the pond in front of the shelter where we warmed up - in different circumstances we would have found a place to wild camp for the night near here and do some more bird watching.

The last stretch to Wakkanai was pretty unpleasant.  Leigh was so keen to end the agony that she road like a demon and I struggled to keep up at times.  On entering the little city we took the first hotel we could find - overpriced and underspec'd - where we will hold up for two days.  This will give us a chance to catch up on work and on Saturday, when the weather is projected to improve, we head for Cape Soya, the northern most part of our journey.