Tuesday 11th December 2012
A day of calm conditions again - but with occasional wind to give me hope of sailing somewhere - south, preferably! We made just 47 miles to 3pm today ... and several times had to gybe right around after the fickle light wind had backed the sails...
Got most of the deck jobs done that I had in mind - tensioned the headsail halyards and then tidied them all on the mast... lashed the anchor down more securely, cleaned the weather screen in the cockpit and also tried to get the hardened salt spots off the windscreen. Washing was dry early this morning - clear blue sky until mid-afternoon kept the air warm.
This afternoon, there was an ominous-looking, long line of dark grey cloud not far off to starboard. Had me worried and very conscious of full sail ... but just gave us good wind for a time so we could move better - but SW in S-SSE wind! In fact, we've been mostly making a course of SW today - wind coming several times from due south!
With such little wind, I'm having to run the generator more often - and this afternoon, it refused to rev up to its usual initial high speed.. despite my taking a wrench to the actuator spindle, it refused to accelerate for ages -but finally, with a lot of effort on my part, loosening the spindle, it got going..
24hr DMG at 3pm: 47 n.ml. - slow!! Cape Horn was 2646 n.ml. away & our nearest land, Easter Island, 445 n.ml. away to ENE, with Pitcairn Island 714 n.ml. to the WNW (both getting further away now) . Punta Gatera, just S of Valdivia (Chile) is 2233 n.ml. to the ESE and New Zealand's East Cape (its closest point to us) is 3170 n.ml to the WSW.
It has been confirmed that the exactEarth website (see below) is showing our track nicely now.
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For my daily position and track:
See my website's 'Travels' page - go to www.svnereida, open 'Travels', then click on "Where is Nereida?"
http://www.exactearth.com/media-centre/recent-ship-tracks/tracking-nereida/ - courtesy 'exactEarth' using their polar-orbiting satellites -, especially good nearer the poles, i.e. should be good when in the Southern Ocean.
Unfotunately, having run out of lithium batteries for the GPS tracker unit, the other website can no longer keep my track up-to-date - it stopped on 17th November...