Poorly at Sea
There are certain times, in ones life when a bout of the screaming abbdabs is at the least bloody inconvenient and completely incapacitating. This has now happened twice to me. Once whilst at 4000m high in the Himalayas with temperatures down to -15 and the prospect of a 15 km trek over a 5000m pass, no way back, with no chance of resting, and secondly after just commencing the passage over the greatest ocean on our planet!!............. However 36 hours later ,a lot lighter, and feeling very sorry for myself, I'm back with enough strength and will power to sit here and compose this report.( toilet tissue is posed ready for action just by my left hand)
However, once again our hours of meticulous crew training paid off, with Bruce and Angela taking full control of Kasuje, whilst also looking after me, and sailed her like old pros, many thanks again to my brilliant crew.
So, we are on our way across the blue Pacific, so far the conditions have been quite benign with steady winds of 10 - 15 knots a light swell and easy motion.We are plotting our route with the help of a weather router from Australia called Bruce, ( whatever else could he be called) and so far he has been the best thing to come out of Australia since Kylie Minogue. Regular weather updates every 12 hours , route planning to miss the worst of the tropical storms etc, for the sailing fanatics reading this i have copied an extract of a typical report below so you can see the depth of information provided. ( for everyone else I would skip the next paragraph)
Hello All
The weather appears to be quite reasonable for the next few days enroute to the Marquises. The tropical low has almost vanished and, although the thunderstorms have not entirely vanished, they are now so isolated they should be relatively easy to avoid.
The trade winds between 4:30S and the equator look like fading back to only around 5 knots by around 00UTC north of 3:00S grading to around 8/10 knots by the time you get to 5:00S. The direction should gradually swing more to a true southeasterly during the next 12 hours as well. Once you get down to
around 5S the wind direction is likely to oscillate more around to the ESE at times as trade wind surges further to the south move past. There are signs that there will be another westerly wind burst affecting the region north of 5S building up on Thursday. This would lead to headwinds if you were north of 5S at this time and the westerly wind bursts also normally trigger increased thunderstorm activity. The aim should be to be just south of 5S by Thursday.
A waypoint near 4:00S 95:00W seems appropriate at the moment. Once your timing close to this waypoint is identified the next waypoint will be suggested. Around this time a more WSW route should be able to be taken, although care needs to be taken to stay far enough south to pick up reasonable trade winds and also to stay far enough south to avoid the worst of the thunderstorms associated with the westerly wind burst.I will keep you informed on developments
best regards
Bruce
We are following Bruce's advise and should get to 4:00S 95:00W by about midday tomorrow where we will look for his next way point suggestion, way up the possibilities and plot our course for the next few days.
Kindest Regards
Skipper Steve and the crew.