We are now at 17º south, the furthest we have been from the equator for a long time and my knees are feeling the difference. The temperatures at night plummet to about 27ºC, not exactly freezing I know, but for legs that are used to several degrees higher it’s a bit of a shock.

So they are now being forced into wearing light trousers for the first time since our short stay in China. The difficulty is putting them on. The cabin is rocking from side to side sometimes gently but from time to time with a bit more energy and too much momentum to allow the co-ordinated movements necessary to insert one leg and then the other into the required but recalcitrant openings.

The other problem we have is sleeping in the rolling aft cabin. The fo’c’sle is impossible to sleep in and the aft cabin little better for the roll but at least the pitch is less. However, our watch keeping system means that we sleep in 4 hour chunks so that on the off watch usually tiredness overcomes the way our bodies are bullied by the sea.

I had a dream that I was in a lift that was going out of control and going faster and faster, upward oddly, in a 6 storey building. Consequently I decided that the best thing was to put the pillow over my head to reduce the impact as we burst through the roof. I awoke to find that I was indeed holding the pillow to my head but that it was the pitching that my befuddled brain was responding to. I have had another dream where I was on a bicycle going suddenly fast and then slow repeatedly. The poor old brain trying to make sense of the strange bedtime experiences.

Watch Change

Chris has just turned in for some more animated dreams but you’ll be pleased to hear that he did manage to get his trousers off.

The last 24 hours were a bit of a milestone for us as we passed the half way mark to Rodriguez, we passed the first 1000 mile mark of our Indian Ocean crossing and we made our fastest 24 hour run with 151 miles under the keel. In 58.6 miles we will have reached the half way to Mauritius point.

Below is a snapshot of our daily chart. The blue diamond top right marks Cocos Keeling anchorage then the circles show each 24 hour run; our worst was on 25^th with only 119 miles, now we have to see if we can top 151. There are strong winds forecast for the coming weekend so that might be quite fast. The squares show half way points to landfalls, just the two so far. The red blob is Gryphon II.

No landmarks but the screen shot of our chart below shows how far we are from any land masses.

Just now we are 2082 miles from nearest point Australia, 1755 from Indonesia, 1396 from Sri Lanka, 2289 from Somalia (thankfully), 1723 from Madagascar and furthest of all 2683 from Richards Bay in South Africa where we complete this crossing before plunging down the coast to Cape Town. The darker blue areas above Mauritius and Madagascar mark the Seychelles and Maldives but we won’t be going there because of the piracy from Somalia; our insurers won’t provide cover for that area even if we wanted to risk it. This means that we also miss out on Sri Lanka, India and Madagascar but at least we should be safe from roguery.

The sun is bright today heating up Gryphon’s solar panels to charge our batteries. This is nice as we’ve had quite a lot of cloud lately and had to resort to the engine for power. Apart from odd wild lurches when the seventh wave comes, the swell is starting to feel a bit more stable but everything still has to be anchored down particularly things like the computer. Small things are the worst, pens have to be clipped on and torches kept safe; the crossword book, the kindle and the IPad which are in constant use, have to have a number of stowage points and mugs must always be in one of the many cup holders about the place, none of these are gimballed so we never have a full cup of anything. Fortunately Gryphon II has lots of grab handles so we are managing to keep the bruises to a minimum. It keeps us on our toes, often literally!