Indian Ocean Leg 2 Day One 12 32.098S 094 10.185E

Aurora_b
Mike and Liz Downing
Fri 27 Sep 2013 10:30
With regret we left Cocos Keeling yesterday morning. We would have loved to stay there longer, but we have to be on our way again. We're now bound for Mauritius a small island about 500 miles to the east of Madagascar. It's another long haul being around 2,400 miles and crossing the heart of the Southern Indian Ocean. There are 4 other boats making the passage. One left on Monday, another on Wednesday and 3, including ourselves, left yesterday. Now the boats are well scattered, but keeping in touch twice a day via the SSB radio (swapping positions and weather details). The forecast looked okay with winds up to 20kts, but they've been quite a bit stronger and last night were 25 to 30kts, gusting higher. The seas are also higher and often confused, so not the ideal start and we've had to keep the speed down to 6kts. Any more would be too fast for these seas with a high risk of breaking something (the boat and us!). As we're crossing what wave patterns there are, we've had water running down the deck both sides a lot of the time and one wave hit sufficiently strong to douse the bimini and cockpit in spray. Luckily we weren't at the wheel at the time! Down below she's comfortable and snug, so sleeping hasn't been a problem. The forecast suggest the winds will ease a bit tomorrow and we hope the sea will go down with it. At noon today we had covered 161.6 miles, so a good start in terms of distance covered.

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