13 January 2011
Having goose winged almost since leaving South Africa we brought in the pole. We have to put Voyageur on to a broad reach until we reach waypoint five which will take us to the south of Valdivia Bank. We are due to arrive opposite the first of the sea mounts in the early evening. Stretching for over 100nm, we will not clear them all until tomorrow morning. The sunny skies of the last three days have been replaced by heavy cloud cover. Last night was stormy and once the moon had set, profoundly black. I strain my eyes in the dark to check the sails and scan the horizon. We were being buffeted by some big breaking waves but nothing serious enough to encroach into the cockpit. However we are clocking off the miles towards our destination. All the yachts are making good progress and no one is having to use the engine. Fuelling on St Helena is done by jerrycan from the local water taxi and would be a long laborious process. We are just hoping against hope that we can make our 72 hour stop there. It is not always possible to do so. The pilot book talks of "rollers". These 'rollers' travel from storms in the North Atlantic and only appear when they reach shallow water. About 3 days a month these can occur making anchorage and landing difficult if not impossible. We have a new weather forecaster based in America who up until now has been reasonably accurate. We should have a good idea within the next few days.....
Day 6
We are now right on our rhumb line course for St Helena with 806nm to go. During the night we ran parallel to the Valdivia Bank clearing the last of the sea mounts by early this morning. Then we were in a position to head on a more northerly route. We jibed. The wind died and veered. Our hourly mileage dropped drastically and in spite of trying every trick we knew to keep her going along we were wholly unsuccessful. We jibed back again. There was nothing for it but to sit it out and wait for the promised forecast of a south, south easterly of 16 to 25knots. We really cannot complain. After a day and two nights of heavy cloud cover and squally winds, the sun shines from a powder blue sky dotted with welcome trade wind clouds. By 2pm our afternoon breeze arrived and off we went once more. Our weather is governed by the South Atlantic High. It moves further south in the summer months keeping the depressions down below the bottom of Africa. Certainly the barometer has remained steadfastly steady at around 2018. This is such a contrast to what we experienced coming around the Cape. It would appear that everything the pilot book says about sailing in a summer South Atlantic is proving to be correct. For once it is good not to hear the words, "well the weather is not normally like this"!
Susan Mackay