West of Darwin - Day 7 - 12 06.753S 115 27.115E
Aurora_b
Mike and Liz Downing
Thu 12 Sep 2013 07:55
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Been at sea for a week, having left Darwin last Thursday, and
are about 200 miles south of Bali. The wind increased as forecast and
remained around 12-14kts all day and night, giving us much better speed and a
noon to noon passage of 153.9, our best day so far. The seas have come up a bit,
but at 14kts, not that bad, so it's good sailing in reasonably comfortable
conditions, with sunny weather continuing. To keep on course and still set the
poled out sail to windward, we tried moving the pole forward so it
takes the sail forward of the forestay. We've tried it before with limited
success, but by reefing the sail at the same time (the pole isn't really long
enough), the sail keeps its shape and stability and it was very successful
- a bit like the yardarm of the square riggers. The leeward genoa is
still sheeted normally, so the two sails create an almost continuous big
sail and we're romping along at the moment at 7.5kts. Not bad in only
12-14kts. Needed that speed this morning as a ship was bearing down on us
and we had to cross it's bows. Never a nice thing to do, even when it's several
miles away and the chartplotter gives a safe CPA (closest point of
approach). That was the 3rd ship that came close, the other two did have to
change course for us. Had to call them up in the pitch black of night
and it was good to see their lights change from red to green, showing they
would pass behind. These are big Panmax ships (960ft) and there was a whole
stream of them last night crossing from the shipping lanes in Indonesia to
Western Australia. They all reported being cargo on AIS, so we suspect they
are going to get coal or other minerals from Australia and take them back to
China via Indonesia. We hadn't expected anything like the volume of shipping
we've seen, and it's all going north/south, so cutting across our
path.
As we're advancing west, the clocks need to change to keep
sunrise and sunset in the right place in the day! Darwin was GMT (UTC if
you must) + 09.30. We got rid of the half hour quite quickly as it confuses the
issue, so have been using GMT+9. Today we will put the clocks back
to GMT+8, so we'll gain an hour.
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