Position Update 1200 (UTC+11) Coral Sea Day 8
Vega
Hugh and Annie
Tue 25 Sep 2018 02:08
21:38.28S 156:29.10E
COG 230T
SOG 7kts
Wind F6 ESE
Sea moderate
Vis good
Baro 1022
Genoa 2 reefs, mainsail 2 reefs
As at this time yesterday it is a lovely sunny day, regular swell and good breeze. We are pressing harder to make sure we arrive at Bundaberg in daylight on Thursday but if this wind stays at +20kts we will have to reduce the genoa again.
Yesterday things changed in the late afternoon with big showers coming through and the sea much more irregular and choppy. This persisted overnight and for some reason we could only manage 4.5 to 5kts SOG. A smoother sea makes a huge difference for us and every time it is more choppy and we fall off waves with a bone jarring thud it keeps the speed right down.
At one point in the night the motion of the boat didn’t feel quite right from down below and it transpired that one of the lines holding the steering wheel had come loose, allowing the main rudder to turn and hold the boat more into the wind than it should have been. Once corrected our speed did go up but I don’t think this was the issue for most of the night.
To Annie’s delight we had a hitchhiker in the form of a very beautiful gannet like bird that was white with black outer wings, the colour change on a straight diagonal line across each wing. I was woken by the sound of Annie trying to shoo it off the targa arch from where it was crapping copiously onto the sprayhood and Perspex window. After a while it gave in and flew off but only as far as the cockpit rail where it roosted until dawn.
We have re-adopted the watch pattern whereby whoever is on watch at night has a timer and alarm to set 20 minute intervals. Every 20 minutes we go up and check for shipping, weather, wind and so on and by doing this I can doze enough between alarms to get through most of the night fairly comfortably and make up any sleep deficit during the day. This allows Annie to sleep for longer than just three hours off watch and the arrangement seems to suit us both.
As we approach Bundaberg we have been advised to watch out for humpback whales and their calves and to run the engine so that they can hear us coming - and move out of the way hopefully. It is possible that this will be in the dark if we can make up a bit of time so it is a good job it is a very bright full moon at the moment. In fact so bright that at Chesterfield we had the answer to whether moonlight is bright enough to activate a solar panel. It can! We were scratching our heads as to how there could be a positive charge into the batteries despite having the instruments and several lights switched on. And then it occurred to us what was happening. By switching everything off we could see that there was a little under an Amp coming from the solar panel!