What’s this, have we taken a wrong turn? Sounds like Gryphon II is in Malaysia or Indonesia with no wind and a thrumming engine.

The GRIB files showed the winds getting very light but not to this extent. We struggled on through half of last night with the genoa and a jib goose-winged and poled out but we were going so far off course we had to take it all down and resort to the engine which is galling as we had hoped not to motor in this trade wind belt. C’est la vie; there are a couple of French yachts a few hundred miles behind us that might be saying the same thing.

Our chart shows the half way to Mauritius mark is 223 miles behind us and Gryphon is now just 601 miles from Rodriguez Island which feels good. If we can keep our speed up to 6 knots, preferably more, we should make it in daylight in 4 days’ time. We don’t want to arrive at night so the speed is important. Meanwhile having the engine running means lots of water being made and as the swell is very benign the mounting laundry and various salty items have been tackled so we sail with an assortment of laundry flags at the stern. The ensign has been taken in altogether as it was being thrashed to bits in the winds we’ve had. All the white on the jack part of the flag has been flayed away so it looks as though the United Kingdom has lost one of its countries! It could be we have invented the post Scotland independence flag.

It is now after lunch and the wind is still only at 4 knots, nowhere near enough so we are still motoring along. We had forgotten how intrusive the engine noise is, having to use it so much in Malaysia we just got used to it.

15:30 and we have 10 knots of wind, the mainsail is up and the genoa out – we are in business. The sky looks dreadful with very low black cloud and about 10 or so bands of rain almost in a circle around us on the horizon, we seem to be sailing in a favoured circle and staying dry. If this was Malaysia there would be throaty thunder and scary lightning in these clouds. The electric storms are one of the things that we are glad to have left behind; Port Dickson from where we left Malaysia is said to be the lightning strike capital of the world. We thought we would get them in the Indian Ocean but no thunder and no lightning so far even in Cocos where we had squall after squall. Mustn’t speak too soon, of course, but so far so good.

17:00: the wind is really back and Gryphon is shifting at 6.5 to 7.5 knots, the rain has arrived too and the big swell has returned. The wind is from SSE now so we are heeling to starboard quite a bit. The sky is brightening to the North so hopefully the rain will move on soon.

Next on the agenda is the radio net at 18:30 then supper and night watches start again at 20:00. Fiddling with fish hooks paid off. The fridge/freezer is now full of fish from a catch the evening before last when we landed a powerful 6½ kilo tuna. It’s good to have very fresh fish on the plate again.