At noon today we were at 16 35S 103 38E, sailing at 6.5 knots on a course of 280M. We had a good sailing breeze of 20 knots from the NE. Our noon-to-noon run was 135nm and the total for the passage so far 842nm. We had 470nm to run to Cocos-Keeling.
Yesterday afternoon we had a very pleasant sail in a 10-15 knot NE breeze, beam reaching along in sunshine. The wind gradually died in the early morning and we ended up motoring for 5 hours from 0300 when we were down to 2 knots of boat speed and the main was slatting violently in the swell. Here's a picture of last night's sunset.
This morning an ENE breeze came up and we have had a pleasant sail with winds varying from 8-22 knots. The wind has backed to the NNE. We've kept it on our beam all day since the forecasts all say the wind will veer back into the SE tomorrow and we don't want to find ourselves directly to windward of our destination - we much prefer broad reaching.
Unfortunately it has been overcast for most of the day, so we haven't been able to dry the many rags which were stowed in the cockpit lockers. How did they get wet? I never got around to replacing the rubber seals atop the sills of the three hatches after our refit in Thailand. The sills seemed very deep, but they weren't deep enough for the green water we took aboard in the gale. That job is firmly on the to-do list now.
We found a little water in the aft bilge (about 500ml). We think some of that is from the poopings since there are holes between one cockpit locker and the engine space, and the side channels (outboard of the engine beds) drain forward into the aft part of the saloon. Twas good to pull up the floorboards and dry off the champers and wine supplies. The first glass in Cocos will taste good.
And here's a picture from during the gale. Practically impossible to catch sea state on camera!
Trust all's well where you are!
No comments:
Post a Comment