No gain without pain!
Fleck
Thu 15 Jul 2010 01:38
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Thursday, July 15th
Position 10:56.5S 133:18.9S
Very boisterous trade winds for the past 24 hours
have really pushed us along well, with 149 nm in the last 24 hours being very
close to, maybe exceeding our record daily run. All at the cost of comfort
on board, of course. Beyond 20 kts of wind the rolling seems to increase out of
all proportion to further increases in speed, no doubt related to sliding
about on the waves as we surf down them. This also results in unpredictable
dollops of sea water appearing in the cockpit, as our topsides smash into waves
side on. All part of the fun, but as we have mentioned many times before, it is
not one of the moments that yacht builders go out of their way to capture
for their advertisments. Spray also gets under the hatches on deck which
therefore have to be 'battened down', creating a very airless interior.
Yesterday was a fairly constand 28 kts of wind, but so far today it is a little
lighter, and the seas seem more orderly, or perhaps we just get used to them. We
are headed for the Hogmanay shoals and the New Year islets: outcrops of the
Coberg Peninsula, which we should round in daylight, then the sailing gets even
more uncomfortable as we come up into the wind to appproach the Van Diemen
Gulf . The pilots books suggest that the wind will drop as we approach the
coast, so perhaps I shouldn't complain about the current conditions: good to
keep the weather gods happy! Hannah managed to sleep in the forcabin last night,
it must have been difficult, and I have prepared a saloon berth with a leecloth
to hold her in. It seems however that preteens prefer their privacy and peace.
We chatted to an Australian Customs Aircraft yesterday, after they buzzed us.
They managed to read our boat's name off the transom: the letters are pale
pastel colours , all different, and about three inches tall: I think they must
have more than a pair of binoculars on board!! They are always looking for
illegal immigrants, and seemed suspicious about a catarmaran that was quite
close, but below our horizon. As we are out of the main shipping lane we have
seen no big boat traffic for several days. Moreover the land ashore, 50 miles or
so away, is all Aboriginal; and they don't go prawn trawling at night, unlike
the convicts! The upshot is that it is traffic free at night, and I sleep for up
to two hours at a stretch, which seems quite sufficient, and a huge difference
to our experience on the inshore passage up the Barrier Reef.
Well, we press on, it is still a very long way to
Bali!
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