Indian Ocean Leg 2 Day Five 14 17.500S 084 48.504E

Aurora_b
Mike and Liz Downing
Tue 1 Oct 2013 11:29
Forgot to mention the squall that we had yesterday morning - the squall we had last evening reminded me! What with the squalls and sea conditions it was quite a day yesterday. The wind wasn't a problem, we've had much higher winds in the past, but cutting across the big, churning and confused sea was not so nice. Waves/swell were coming from the southwest, south and southeast, all at the same time! So we would have a wave break at the bow, followed by one at the quarter, followed by one on the beam, so lots of running water on the decks, but no more in the cockpit! It was actually a lovely sunny day yesterday and the sea with all the white horses and spray was quite spectacular to watch, but taking big seas on the beam is never nice and we try to avoid it if we can. Anyway, it all calmed down in the early hours of this morning and we've had winds of 10-15kts most of the day. The predominant swell from the southeast has still been quite big (3-4 metres), but it's not breaking and not threatening. The period is only 7 seconds between peaks, so quite short, but much better than yesterday when it was too confused to even try and measure any period. As soon as the winds eased we started to make a more southerly course to get back on the rhumb line. The Open CPN software that we have presents the rhumb line course while the Navionics charts on the chartplotter present a great circle route, so we can compare. As is normally the case on these passages, we're sailing the best course we can given the conditions and at the moment that's been above both, hence the more southerly course. The noon-to-noon run was 133.8 miles. Not too bad considering the conditions. The next few days are supposed to be quite light, with an increase back up to 20kts+ coming on Friday and over the weekend, but it's then supposed to be coming from the east southeast, which should, we hope, make it easier to deal with.

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