Pos 39:36S 59:19W Noon Day2.
The day's sail ends in a glorious deep red sunset, with wind on the nose (As
usual!) we settle down to warming curry to retore some heat to frozen parts.
As night now engulfs us, we sail under a great sky full of stars which makes
it difficult to make out the old and familiar. This plus our location in the
southern hemisphe brings new constelations and with it new challenges for us
to identify them.
The "Southern Cross" is now our Plough, Orion sits upside down behind us in
the north, all very confusing and along with a large bright satellite which
rises ahead of us and was orginally mistaken for the lights of a vessel when
on the horizon.
Fluky winds during the night result in the autopilot being oveerwhelmed and
we end up on a reciprical course taking us back the way we came. As it
happend on Thomas's watch we suspect his desire for weekend night clubing
Mar del Plata might have been an influence!
My turn came at the end of my watch at 0400 (As waiting for my relief to
appear) when lack of wind and boat speed coupled with a large wave did a
similar thing. The conclusion to this was "Engine ON" and at last were
heading in the right direction and making some distance.
Morning arrives with clear skies, a chill southerly wind and a metre sea. We
are accompained by a profusion of bird life and we wrestle with our guide
book to try and identify them. Lars spots an (We think) Albatross, but our
attempts to photograph them from a rocking boat with telephot lenses fails
miserably as whenever we produce a camera they seem to know and keep their
distance.
Lars checks our progress, we've done 141 nautical miles in 24hours and
estimate we be entering the roaring forties in about four hours.
In the meantime 1200 also signals time for the first beer of the day and
that duly served we leave our readers.....
Bob the Blog
via satellite
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