Saturday 25th February 2012
A lovely sunset - long, low, thin lines of golden cloud... As a bonus for waiting , as I sipped my tea, there was a thin silver crescent moon hanging low, with bright Venus shining above.
The day has been far pleasanter than last night...! Needing to heave to just before sunset, in winds regularly up to around 40 knots and seas becoming high and rough and tossing us about, is never a pleasant experience and yesterday was no exception, although at least I did finally get a good sleep until just before dawn. The boat's motion was not smooth because the seas were so rough, but safe in my bunk that didn't seem to matter too much. And my 'ready-made' meal was definitely very welcome before I settled down to sleep!
Interestingly, despite boatspeed being zero almost all the time, we were taken at around 2-3 knots SOG by a strong current all the time (about 14 hrs) we were hove-to - a total distance of 41 miles NNE! Some current!
The sky cleared to give a lovely sunny day and the wind died down by early morning (7a.m.) to around 23knots - and stayed at that over most of the day. The wind has been mainly W-NW, which has made for pleasant broad-reaching at a good speed, without the need to pole out the genoa, our course being E-ESE with a SW current over the daytime. (The current is clearly tidal and is presently slowing us down quite a bit whereas at other times it has been very helpful!)
I'm finally back into good Winlink connections at certain times of day (mainly via VK6KPS near Perth and YB0AJZ on Java) whereas Sailmail (which my website link comes to) has been difficult for the last few days - so send any emails to Winlink if you want to be sure I see them promptly! Otherwise, there could be a wait until I get better connections -as will happen eventually, for sure!
From the weather info I have, we should keep the present conditions, fair-sized swell included, with possibly lighter winds by early Monday, before a Low passes close S of us, bringing a Cold Front and stronger winds during the day - with the usual backing of the wind as the Front passes over. Let's hope the winds don't get up as much as yesterday!
Time for my hot stew...
DMG (noon-to-noon) .... a mere 78mls! Present position (at 1750GMT/9.50pm LT Saturday): 41 18'S, 064 10'E; wind NW 25kt (just gusted 28kt .. might furl in some genoa for overnight!); COG 105T; SOG ~5.5kt (boatspeed ~7kt)