West of Darwin - Day 11 - 12 00.787S 104 31.265E
Aurora_b
Mike and Liz Downing
Mon 16 Sep 2013 09:21
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A nasty night! What were the last words of yesterday's entry:
'a very pleasant and comfortable sail'. Last night was the complete
opposite - unpleasant and uncomfortable. The reason - squalls and quite a
few of them. They came up behind us and brought rain, a
shifting wind that generally increased into the 20s with gusts in the
early 30s, and a rough, churning sea. From start to end they probably
last for 30 minutes to an hour, but the stronger winds and rain usually
pass within 20 minutes or so. It's not the strong winds or the fact that they
shift around in all sorts of unexpected directions, nor the need to change
sails/poles in the pouring rain in the middle of the night, it's actually the
lulls we got just before and/or after and lasted quite a while.
The wind would drop right down and not fill the sails without them
collapsing, so our speed dropped right down to 3 - 4kts and with
the rougher seas, the boat would roll quite violently. Anything that wasn't
well secured would take to the air, as would we if not hanging on! Doing
anything was incredibly difficult in these conditions. We're having to
relearn our squall tactics and getting sail back up as soon as possible
afterwards and getting going does help. We've been tracking the squalls on
radar and this morning actually out ran a couple. It goes against instinct and
training to put more sail up when a squall is approaching, but according to
radar we would be on the edge of both, so by heading north under full sail
at 8kts plus, we got clear and they passed to the south of us. This
afternoon has been much better, the seas have eased and with a wind
of 15-20kts we've been making good speeds. However, it's remained
overcast and it looks like squalls are passing quite a bit to the
north and south of us. Despite all the stop/starts, heavy/light winds and
churning seas, our noon-to-noon run was a reasonable 142 miles.
Passed 100 miles to the south of Christmas Island during the
night. It's also Australian and given more time we might have stopped
there, but we must press on. Despite the squalls there is a reason to
celebrate - we have less than 500 miles to
go!
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