Tuesday, 2nd November 2010 (Day 4 at Sea)
01.00hrs A beautiful night, Terry is on watch and called skipper, the wind had died down to 6 knots, so time to roll up
the headsail and motor for a while, we set a course of 239T back towards the rum line and waypoint.
04.00hrs We now have the benefit of a small moon, and it is still a beautiful night, even if we are only motor sailing............. The sea is flat, the stars are dancing in the sky, and we are heading in the right direction (distance traveled so far, 428 n miles). But, but, but, we have a 2 knot current against us, which is making our passage slow, however, this gets worse and an hour later the current is 3.6 knots against us. Blast the bleedin thing... Its supposed to go in the other direction and help us along, but no, its hindering progress big time. Our speed through the water is 7.5 knots, but over the ground, it is only 3.9 knots. Real slow stuff... Its amazing that out here in the middle of an Ocean, we would have such a strong current! and whats more, Skippers hip is giving trouble once again, just to add to the woe's...............
05.00hrs A beautiful dawn as the sky began to get a pale shade of blue, we covered 75 miles in the last 12 hours, poor progress for us. Still, as said earlier, a beautiful scene, lot of shipping traffic, heading to and from the Cape of Good Hope.
09.00hrs Radio Call. net controller today is Tucanon our NBF's Dick and Irene, plus the Bubbly Bev and Moe. The radio thing took Irene about 30 mins. She tends to be efficient at this, no chat, of any sort. Just your positions please. However we did get to talk to some of the other boats on the SSB after the broadcast. Brown eyed Girl has a dose of dirty fuel, just like ourselves. After a while, we agreed that it had to be Bali where we got the dirty fuel. Before that, the last place we got fuel was in Cairns, and we checked the filters in Bali when we arrived there and they were in perfect condition, so they are the culprits.
We had to stop the engine and change the filters, plus clean out the glass bowls, ohhh my gawd, the water and dirt was just awful. How the motors were still operating is amazing. This all took about 1 1/2 hours, and then we were back in business again, motoring along slowly. We also discovered water coming in from the stern somewhere, we will have to get into the Lazarette and investigate. The Lazarette on the boat is the equivalent of the Boot of a car. A large storage space at the back of the boat.
15.50hrs The wind increased from the ESE. to 14/18 knots, so we shut down the engine and hoisted the "Bag of Fear" and off we went on our merry way again. During the afternoon, as we were discussing the sailing language, Terry suggested (as only Terry will do!) that he should write a book about sailing, and in particular about all the different terminology used, or sailing language, and make it all simple....... Like why not say "The Green Light" instead of starboard, and the "Red Light" instead of Port. The width of the boat instead of "Beam" and so on, we had a real laugh with him on this, and do you know something, he might be right...
17.30hrs We had roast lamb for dinner, "Halal" lamb, as it was the only lamb available in Mauritius. Along with this, we had green geans, carrots, roast potatoes and creamed potatoes, and plenty of them. We also had this time, mint sauce from Tzigane and Dr. EE 's jam from Mauritius, all just wonderful....... all clean plates again.
21.00hrs We had some chat with other boats again on the SSB radio, and our distance traveled was 558 n miles, distance to waypoint is 80 n miles, when we get there, we will have traveled almost an extra 100 miles, because of the wind directions.
Spinnaker flying, it was another beautiful night at sea............ Amen.
That's it for today,
Signed :- Stephen Hyde (Skipper)