19:52.49s 160:24.51e
Farr Gone Blog
Stuart Cannon
Fri 19 Aug 2011 03:43
Life in the fast lane. When the boat falls below seven knots I'm wondering what's wrong. We've been flying and that has it's own problems. The autopilot is one of them. It can't quite cope with waves and high speed. On the front of the wave it zigs to windward and on the back of the wave it zags the other way. It means we sail a very odd course but to look on the bright side, nobody could hit us with a torpedo. Last night, Otto the autopilot was particularly cantankerous. I would sit in the cockpit for as long as I wanted and he would work fine. If I went below and lay down, by the time I had the rug over me the bloody alarm would go off. Beep beep incessantly, the sails would flap and I'd get up, reset everything and the process would start again. It's a form of torture that even guantanomo bay should look into.
I'm getting used to getting cold. I'm not happy about wearing a jumper, sweater for you US types, but it has to be. At night the temperatures out here are fairly brisk and any exposed skin suffers. So it's fouls and stuff and that's not nearly as good as tropical sailing. I'm not complaining though. The sail is great fun, just a little exhausting as sleep is a rare commodity now. Especially with a misbehaving Otto.
Two flying fish in the cockpit. What does this mean? They are all over the pacific and sometimes the poor misguided buggers land on the boat, make a mess and proceed to die. This leaves me to clean up and I do hate cleaning up after dead things. Most unthoughtful of them. It is captivating to watch them fly across the water to escape some predator or other. Even the birds are onto them, flying low across the water in the hope one takes off at an unfortunate moment.
We have just passed Recife Nereus, one of the many reefs around the coral sea, and we were greeted by a very large group of small but highly animated dolphin who came charging out to meet us, swam around for about ten minutes and then decided we were no fun and disappeared. Very entertaining for too short a time.