Indian Ocean Leg 2 Day Thirteen 17 47.400S 066 00.486E

Aurora_b
Mike and Liz Downing
Wed 9 Oct 2013 10:20
The seas eased a bit more yesterday afternoon and at 19.00 the headsail poles went up and the night was spent under the 2 poled out genoas, but both heavily reefed, making 6 to 7kts. We had only intended to put the windward pole up, just in case the wind dropped further overnight, but having done that the wind moved dead behind and the genoa threatened to back when we rolled. So the other pole was needed to stop it. To put the pole up the genoa has to be rolled away, the sheet leads changed and then rolled out again. We didn't want to stop the boat, so rolled out the windward genoa to keep it going at 6kts or so while we rolled the leeward genoa away and put the pole up. Having done all that and unfurled the genoa again we thought we might just as well leave the windward genoa set. The conditions were just about okay, and proved to be so as we didn't touch the sails or hydrovane for the next 12 hours. The wind has remained steady at 15 to 25kts (is that steady?!) all day and with a little more sail out we've been making 7 to 8kts and surfed down a couple of waves at over 9kts! It's another sunny day with hardly a cloud in th sky, and a lovely sailing day. It's good to have the headsails up again. The sea could still go down a bit, but it's nothing like it was over the last few days. The noon-to-noon run was 158 miles and we have just under 500 miles to go. There's a lot more shipping about now - we currently have 5 ships on AIS. Those going west all seem to be heading for Brazil and those going east, to Singapore. None appear to be stopping at Mauritius, so we must be on the main shipping route to/from Asia going via South Africa.

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