Sunday 9pm Wind down a lot - we're only making around 2kt - Fred keeping us more-or-less on course, despite a bit of wandering around at times - he's having a difficult time of it!
Monday 4am We're almost just drifting, in 6kt or so of SW wind - at 1.5kt, we're not getting very far just now. Hope the wind picks up soon - still pitch dark here.
5:30am Dawn came around 4:30am, bringing a nice NW wind with it .. and so I didn't get back to my bunk... Gybed the sails and we're beam reaching now at just over 3.5kt - big improvement! Feeling a lot happier to be making a better speed and wind should increase over the day. More sleep now...
4pm Has turned into a nice sunny day with good wind and high, white, broken cloud layer overhead with blue sky ahead. Seas up with the wind - on a broad reach - not downwind enough to go goose-winged.
Saw Yellow-nosed albatross earlier - yellow and black bill very clear, it came so close.
8pm Sunshine earlier didn't last very long - grey clouds came over. Wind is still well up. Difficult to maintain a downwind course in the swell that built up with the increased wind - so having to go off course slightly to keep genoa filled - poling out not an option in darkness now. Tried going goose-winged with trysail earlier - didn't work well in swell ...
Looking forward to maintaining reasonable speed in good W wind for next day or more - so should be passing S of Cape Agulhas (and Cape of Good Hope 67 miles beforehand) by Wednesday evening or overnight into early Thursday morning at very latest.
That will mean passing into the Indian Ocean - already we're in its waters as shown by the sea temperature, which has shot up to 23C from 17C around midday.
1900GMT (=2000LT) - end of Day 131. We made 83 n.ml. DMG over the 24 hr period, measured in a straight line between the two 1900 GMT positions.
Total distance covered from Victoria, B.C., to end of Day 131 (by daily DMGs): 12,306 n.ml.
Distances (at 1900Z): WP due S of Cape Agulhas: 201 n.ml.; Cape Agulhas LH (S.Africa): 382 n.ml. to NNE; Cape Town Hbr entrance: 508 n.ml. to NNE; Cape Horn LH: 3232 n.ml. to SW; Montevideo: 3335 n.ml to W; Buenos Aires: 3436 n.ml to W; Rio de Janeiro: 3164 n.ml. to WNW.
Position & weather report, for 1900 GMT, posted to Winlink.org and Shiptrak.org (using my US callsign KC2IOV):
TIME: 2019/02/11 19:00GMT LATITUDE: 40-21.20S LONGITUDE: 015-36.17E COURSE: 090T SPEED: 5.2kt
WIND_SPEED: 14kt WIND_DIR: WNW SWELL_DIR: W SWELL_HT: 3.0m CLOUDS: 100%
BARO: 1012.1hPa TREND: 0 AIR_TEMP: 17.0C SEA_TEMP: 22.0C
COMMENT: Grey cloudy sky at sunset. Warm sea temp - Indian Ocean water
