Wednesday 3rd April
Dull start to the day - cold, moist air, wind from SSW, later veering to WSW, seas slowly lying down - now around 3m.
Speed varied between 3.5 & 4.5 kt over the day, occasionally touching 5kt.
Changed over galley gas supply to large butane tank . Able to stow away small camping burner & use galley cooker normally. Nice to be able to make hot drinks &/or food with no fuss! Cleared up in galley -with calmer conditions, so much easier to move around and deal with things on board.
Afternoon - rainclouds threatened - but no rain fell and later, we were back to solid overcast again. No sun seen today...
Went to take barometer reading for log - blank screen ... batteries had run out. Explained why the pressure readings were surprisingly low earlier - well down on the 1018 of yesterday whereas should have been higher with High very close by now. Having just downloaded current weatherfax, was able to set barometer to 1020 hPa - a 'guestimate' which I felt was probably fairly accurate. A few hours later, it had risen to 1022.
Got ready for downloading a weatherfax - remote screen for computer suddenly went blank.... and wouldn't come up again... Definitely not my day today!! Plugged cable in several times - no difference .... searched for spare cable - none to be found.. either screen or cable is faulty - not sure which but suspect cable end connector. Started to get concerned ... need computer for communications - emails, weather info, gribs... Went to start up Fax machine with independent aerial - started fine, and began receiving weatherfax transmission.... good - but paper was not moving or coming out. Spent a time trying to see where the problem lay - finally arrived at a temporary solution...
Could not remember where the spare laptop had been stowed - very safely!! Searched around for some time - finally came across it in an unexpected place! In between times had a few 'scheds' on radio.... was not feeling too happy... Was about to send position report to Winlink but spare laptop needed charging first - seems OK and hope to send this log report soon with delayed position report.
High pressure is settled to N of here for several days, slowly moving E, giving veered very light winds - finally ending up from N before a Cold Front passes over around end of the weekend, giving stronger winds from SW possibly. In the meantime, we're likely to become stationary - or nearly so! Could give a chance to replace the wind steering rudder ... we'll see soon enough!
Tonight, boat speed down to 3.5kt or less.
D.M.G. over 24hr to 1100GMT: 101 n.ml. ; Cape Leeuwin : 1257 n.ml. (288T) ; King Island (entrance to Bass Strait) : 284 n.ml. ; Tasmania S.E.Cape : 318 n.ml.
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For my positions and track, see either:
www.svnereida.com - 'Travels' - "Where is 'Nereida'?"
or
http://www.exactearth.com/media-centre/recent-ship-tracks/tracking-nereida/