Day 10 January 25th 726 miles left to go at 6:00pm GMT
Wind has been constantly between 16 and 21 and this has caused a bigger swell. It is coming from behind us so not too bad just a bit uncomfortable sometimes. It is also slowing us down and we are not averaging the 6.5 knots speed for the crossing that we thought we would.
I just don’t sleep in these conditions so I sat up while Heidi was on her watch from 9pm to 12pm and did photo sorting. This was inspired by Peter! I now have all our photos sorted and saved onto a 2 tb hard drive, chronically sorted by each year and then in different folders. Theoretically I should be able to find a photo very quickly. (So long as my mental capacity is that I can remember which year the photo was taken of course!!) I tried to sleep but it was hopeless. Robbie was also up and down, and he jumped out of bed at one stage as he thought he heard Heidi calling him from the Pilothouse, but it was a dream! Peter was on watch and all was well.
Robbie started my 3am watch and let me sleep and I came up after an hour to relieve him. It’s now 7.30am and the crew are all asleep, daylight is just breaking, the wind is 18.6 knots, the swell is mainly 3 metres with the occasional big one which really rocks the boat. I don’t like it in the dark but it doesn’t seem as bad in daylight. Our current speed is only 5.2 knots at 1600 rpm, so it is slowing us right down. We have a course set and the GPS is on Nav. Mode and the rudder is continually moving back and forth trying to keep us on our course. The waves are picking us up and steering us off course, once it gets more than 20 degrees an alarm goes off but the boat rights itself. Our speed is varying from 5.4 climbing up the waves, to 6.3 surfing down the waves.
I have just received Stokey’s weather email for today:
Morning all
Winds showing ENE to East 18 to 21 knt mark, these show to ease of a little by Thursday
Winds Easterly 18 to 21 Knts
Precipitation 0.0 mm
Current 283 T @ 0.2
Wave height 2.6 to 2.9 m
Prim swell 340 deg T
Wind wave 084 deg T
Same WPT Latitude 13 degrees 50 minutes N & Longitude 55 degrees 00 minutes W
Looks like you will keep good trades all the way in and we should see a nice little surface current build as a result fingers crossed
Enjoy
Stokey
Thanks Stokey! So it looks like more of the same for the next few days. What a shame he can’t fix the weather but he’s pretty good at predicting it. Basically what he says is what happens. These conditions make cooking quite a bit harder. Last night we just heated Spaghetti Bolognese that I had precooked and frozen for this sort of conditions, and Robbie cooked the pasta fresh. There was a lot of laughter coming from the kitchen as Heidi went to help him and Peter and I were working on photos. Robbie is a great cook and enjoys to cook. Heidi watched how he did the pasta and once he got past – the packet exploding as he opened it with a shower of pasta everywhere, he went to put it straight in the pot with cold water. I could hear Heidi laughing and suggesting that was not how to cook pasta and I just had a giggle and tuned out. Robbie and I have very different cooking styles and sometimes it’s better for us to do it alone as our opinions vary so much. I’m just delighted someone else wants to cook – I ain’t rocking the boat!!
It has been great having Peter and Heidi as “crew” as they call it, we just think of them as friends, along on this passage. We could not have done it on our own, they are so helpful and it makes the night watches, and everything, a lot easier. We have really enjoyed and appreciated the company and help. But in regards to doing it on your own, we are looking forward to catching up with a very brave, well-traveled Jennifer and James Hamilton, on their Nordhavn 52’ “Dirona” in Barbados. Now you should check out their blog – its www.mvdirona.com This American couple we met 2 years ago in Fiordland, down the very remote part of the South Island of New Zealand, that, not many pleasure boats get to – apart from local fishermen, and cruise ships. We had a very enjoyable evening on Southern Star with my brother Murray and his wife Jenny. Murray and Robbie had been catching Blue Cod and Murray cooked it for us. (My very favourite ever fish)
Anyway Robbie says that James and Jennifer have the biggest balls of anyone he knows and I think he’s right! Anyway the point I am trying to get to is that this couple, are currently traveling on a passage from St Helena Island to Barbados! They are making that long non -stop 3650 nautical mile passage on their own, with no crew! They left on the 9th January and will arrive in Barbados around the 4th Feb. They also recently made a long passage of 3500 (I think) nautical miles from Dampier, Australia to Reunion Island near Cape Town on their own. Oh no! – not to forget also on board is their beautiful cat “Spitfire”! I don’t think Spitfire does a night watch though?
The day was pretty quiet apart from the swell sending things flying, today it was a half can of coke while we were eating lunch. You need to be an Octopus with 8 arms to grab stuff when it starts flying. Menu today was lunch pasta salad and salmon and tonight is again a precooked Lasagne and coleslaw, as it is a bit dangerous cooking in this sea. Especially as our convection/microwave oven is up quite high. The main oven we have to run the generator for when we use it.
We are now all eagerly counting down the days until we can party in Barbados. The rate we are going I think we will all be sleeping! I can’t wait to see how many people have been following us on the tracker, once we get internet we can see that data.
I forgot to say that we had a call on our sat phone the other day, and I missed it I was asleep. Our friend Jeff Lewis from the Gold Coast Australia rang to say G’day. Robbie was really chuffed to hear from him. Barb was having a girls weekend at the Tennis in Melbourne. It’s a real heart stopper when the sat phone rings, as it never rings! We mainly use it for emergency calls – we used it a lot when we had the incident with Stormvogel in the Coral Sea and we use it for satellite email service, for like now when we are crossing oceans and have no local phone service. It’s a great piece of gear really.
Todays photo is in the Master bedroom??
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