Mayotte to Richard’s Bay - 1130UTC (+3 local)

Vega
Hugh and Annie
Sun 30 Oct 2022 12:46

19:29.2S 37:08.5E
COG 223T
SOG 5.7kts
Motoring
Hot and sunny
Sea state slight
Hecla 3nm behind

Last night we watched the moon set before midnight. It is bright enough now to be a comfort again. There was hardly a cloud in the clear, starry sky and we sailed under full mainsail before putting a couple of reefs in at 0400.
Never have we weather routed (which we pronounce “rooted” and our American and Australian friends pronounce “rowted”, as in woodworking) in as much depth as we are on this passage. We have also learnt that detailed planning more than a day ahead is a fruitless exercise. 
We use Des Cason, a South African living in Durban, for weather advice based upon his knowledge and experience of sailing the Mozambique Channel over many years. Most other yachties sailing here do the same. Des will tell us whether there are any major threats or anomalies that could affect our passage - ie whether we should be going or not - and what to expect over the next 24 hours. He considers any detailed planning beyond 24 hours to be “for the fairies”. He will also lob in the odd blood curdling _expression_ or anecdote to make us fully aware of the “nature of the beast” that we are dealing with and it is not stuff for the faint hearted.
You may recall that we also use a weather routing service provided by PredictWind that, using lots of preset parameters chosen by us, will calculate routes on its server and send out the resulting weather and routing grib files for reading on the PW software. The weather forecasts are updated every 12 hours so only twice a day will you be up to date. Because the weather is so unpredictable the weather routes may change significantly over a 12 hour period but you won’t know this until you re-do the exercise. No problem in settled conditions or for crossing oceans but not quite so good sailing down the Mozambique Channel where keeping up your average speed is critical (unless you were James Cook who was probably drawing the charts that others would subsequently use and, within understood broad seasonal variations, would have to deal with whatever weather was thrown at him). Our solution to the PW problem has been LuckGrib that Annie has adopted with a passion. LuckGrib will do exactly the same as PW but on your iPad and in much more detail. Every parameter you can think of can be varied as and when you choose and a new route calculated at any time. Furthermore, you can watch the effect of your changed parameters on the chart as you go along with the need to download only the up to date weather files, in this case every six hours. These files are smaller than the PW files, being only weather, and furthermore seem to be subject to greater compression for transmission via satellites. At circa 45kb the LG files are tiny!
The real bonus for this passage has been the fact that LG gives you detailed information on the currents. PW will also, but only if you subscribe to the professional version making an annual subscription far more expensive than the one off purchase of the LG package.
Now you might think that writing all this stuff about the difference between two weather routing apps is irrelevant to my readership (if I may be so vain in using the term). However, it may be of interest to other yachties and, most importantly, will give you an understanding of what dominates our thinking and experience on a passage such as this!
To illustrate the point, yesterday I broke the pole holding our ensign and both dropped into the sea. We immediately went into MOB drill with Annie watching the floating ensign and me turning on the engine while furling the genoa. I then turned the boat around (the RYA recommends an immediate crash gybe but this seemed a bit extreme in the circumstances) and we tried to follow our track back to the point of the MOB (Man Over Board). At the time we were in a strong south going current, part of a permanent anti-clockwise flowing “gyre” for which a well planned entry and exit is an important part of the passage. However, the current was so strong we could only make very slow progress back to the MOB and holding the intended course was not easy. In the meantime Annie had momentarily taken her eye off the ensign to look at the plotter - the ensign never to be seen again. We looked for 20 minutes before giving up. Morals of the tale?
1. Use of current can be very important for passage planning
2. Remove the flagpole before raising the Duogen 
3. NEVER, EVER fall overboard
Incidentally, for satellite communication we use a package provided by Mailasail. Based in west London and run by an interesting character called Ed Wildgoose, Ed and I have sparred sometimes acrimoniously over the years. Ed is what I would call a “geek” or “techie” with poor but improving customer relations skills. Ed would describe me as an “idiot” I am sure but he seems to have little regard for the fact that some people are completely unintuitive when it comes to running data systems and software packages. Slowly over the years the penny has been dropping for me with several expensive incidents of unnecessary data usage along the way. However, as far as I am concerned Ed and I are on good terms, his system is functioning perfectly and it really is as simple as he has tried to explain. One service offered by Mailasail is a free and highly compressed weather grib file. The files are so small the forecasts are accessible for huge areas and it enables us to keep an eye on longer term developments. It is perfect for following the big low pressure systems as they develop in the southern ocean and track across South Africa, sucking in the high pressure trade wind from the east and forcing humungous southerly wind into the Mozambique Channel. We downloaded one of these weather files last night and it is suggesting fairly settled conditions over the next week which might mean not having to take shelter on the Mozambique coast before Richards Bay.
Sadly the fresh tuna has run its course. We have enjoyed it plain fried, marinated before frying with various herbs and spices, in a tuna and white bean stew and in a mild coconut curry (hot and later cold). Absolutely delicious. Now we could be moving on to the real food - tins of tartiflette and cassoulet. However, Annie is balking at this and prefers we use up our remaining fresh vegetables first. Hey Ho.


SY Vega