Tuesday 19th April (Day 3 lying to drogue!)
6.30am
First light a short while ago... still dark an hour ago with bright full moon in near-clear sky. Just had another breaker hit us - water into cockpit and onto hatch area - so lots of water yet again, down below - but protective plastic screen beside chart table doing a good job there..! Can feel acceleration as waves hit, but then drogue holds us back as wave passes under us...
Seas are forecast to increase some more over today, before subsiding - so might have to wait another day or so before retrieving drogue safely and moving away....
Position now is 6.6 ml WSW of noon position on Saturday, just after engine problem occurred. We're drifting SE at 2.5kt in NW 37kt wind
Back to my bunk for some more sleep....
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Midday position/weather report (1400GMT):
LATITUDE: 38-55.87S LONGITUDE: 033-11.10W
COURSE: 105T SPEED: 2.0
WIND_SPEED: 33 WIND_DIR: 290T/WNW
SWELL_DIR: W SWELL_HT: 5.0M
CLOUDS: 0% BARO: 1007 TREND: 0 SEA_TEMP: 22.0C
Drogue still out.Wind 35-45 o'night. Hit by breakers often; 24hr DMG 46ml; Cape Town 2477ml
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1pm
I'd just finished mopping up and drying off the main cabin floor and woodwork - when we got hit by another breaker - water everywhere again, down from the edges of the sliding hatch, as usual....grrr!!! Wind has been up around 30-35knots all morning and seas around 5m - probably more - it's so difficult to judge ... but they're BIG!! Scattered cloud now, but blue sky for quite a time earlier - always nice to see the sun! (12.7A coming into batteries from solar panels!)
We are actually further E now than we've been before on this passage - hurrah! In fact, Saturday's noon position is just 15ml NW of us at this moment... (Meaning DMG over 3 days is 15ml!!) The wind is now from W and should back more - so we'll end up heading NE- NNE eventually (o'night Wed) - and after that we'll be in the middle of a 'no-wind' high pressure area ... so I hope to find my engine & prop both working fine then!
6.20pm
Just got dark... Wind blowing 33 knots and still being hit by some big waves, although had no water down for a time - but I'm not drying up too thoroughly until I'm sure I'm not wasting my efforts! Time to cook - a 'proper' meal would be nice.... Heading NNE now...
It will be so good to get going again - we've been lying to the drogue since just before midnight Saturday, rolling around ever since... nearly three days, so far... and another to go, possibly.