Thursday 21st April 2011 (Maundy Thursday)
Trying to get East asap to get away from those nasty, deep Lows regularly heading this way from the Rio de la Plata (Uruguay/Brazil) area...
Has been a lovely day here -sunny, warm, calm, with slight swell from SW .... blue, sunny sky.... Still lots of shearwaters and occasional albatross and spectacled petrels... Nice to be able to organize boat after rough weather ... and have good meals! Would have been nice to have had enough wind for sailing ... but engine power (I've calculated I've enough in main diesel tank still for 5 days - and jerry cans would give another 4-5 days of ambling!) means no power worries... and lots of hot water... (Solar panels were putting in 15A when engine was off today, I saw!)
Cleared lines in cockpit - what a mess! ..... from heeling in big waves and seas breaking into there... Reckon if there hadn't been my Delta drogue with 200 m of line in bag tied down on top of floorboarding there, the boards would have been washed away - clearly lifted, with seawater in heeled cockpit, because lines got underneath boards, despite weight of wet bag. Also re-packed (after dried in sun) JSD into bag on port quarter - hopefully won't need again - but you never know! It's all 'ready to go' again... Lots of pausing to enjoy watching birds - they've adopted us, I think! Keep resting, often in a group, in water nearby. Beautiful sunset...
Wind has gone NE tonight (furled in genoa earlier ... wind ahead and too light to sail in) - so will look forward to stronger N winds tomorrow - to sail, hopefully!
Lovely bright but hazy moon, shining on very smooth sea surface with long, slow, slight swell.
TIME: 2011/04/21 14:00 UTC
LATITUDE: 39-05.82S LONGITUDE: 030-29.06W
COURSE: 101T SPEED: 5.5
WIND_SPEED: 4 WIND_DIR: NW
SWELL_DIR: SW SWELL_HT: 2.0M
CLOUDS: 60% BARO: 1023 TREND: -1
24hr DMG 116ml. Distance to Cape Town: 2351ml