Day 3 - Aurora B Leaves the Tropics - Noon Position 23 27.600S 179 00.315W

Aurora_b
Mike and Liz Downing
Tue 2 Nov 2010 05:09
After 2 years in the tropics we crossed the tropic of Capricorn after lunch today and are heading for cooler climes. Already when on watch at night we have been wearing fleeces, Musto ocean trousers and a coastal jacket to stay warm. Wearing our ocean jackets will be the next step when it gets colder still. We haven't yet started searching for the socks and deck shoes, so we have all this gear on and bare feet! We haven't worn deck shoes on the boat since crossing into the tropics 2 years ago, so it will be strange to start wearing them again.

The wind has been fairly consistent in direction and speed and we had a good noon-to-noon run of 152 miles. The wind and sea are on the beam as I write this, but the motion is not too bad. Calling into the Minerva reef was one of our options, but the forecasts suggests it's better to press on and we're currently passing 15 miles to the west of it. The forecasts suggest that there might be a low forming on the north coast of Australia which may move east towards our path, so we're making as much progress south as we can so if it does materialize it passes to the north of us. We're currently making 7kts which should get us sufficiently far south, but it looks like we might get a couple of light wind days, so it's unlikely that we'll be able to keep this speed up. We shall see.

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