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Exocet Strike - January 14-15th 2017



The slow progress during the day gave way to fast and furious progress in the evening. We put one reef in just before dinner, which we then decided after dinner was not sufficient, so put reef two in. The wind had built up to 25 - 30 in by now and we were hitting ten knots of boat speed, with two reefs in regularly. We also had current with us and our hourly distances were 10 miles, which if sustained would give a daily run rate of 240 nautical miles, which for us is probably a record.

The sky's were very clear overnight and the rising moon looked amazing, very orangey yellow, almost like a sunset. This got more and more silvery as it rose.

Later in the night the clouds started to roll in and now it's very grey and overcast, no doubt have to run the generator to top up the batteries. The wind has also dropped and gone a bit more to the east which is helping us on our course.
Ahead of us are a range of seamounts, underwater mountains, and some of them are only 28 metres below the surface. Doesn't sound so bad, but when the seabed is 5000 metres down and it suddenly comes up to near the surface, there is the potential for a lot of turbulent and even breaking seas, especially if it gets windy, which it may be later. So we are aiming to sail to the west of this area. On our tracker you will see we are doing a bit of a dogleg course to avoid this area.

Next installment tomorrow.


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