23.55N 35.30E
JENNY
Alan Franklin/ Lynne Gane
Wed 11 Mar 2009 08:05
Hello all
We are currently at anchor behind what can be
described as a large sand dune sitting out a gale,even in our sheltered position
the wind is blowing across our decks at 25 to 30 knts at sea this would be
around 40 knts.
One of our boats came in yesterday a Bowman 45,
which is an excellent sea boat,after having spent 36hrs at sea and they were
shattered,the comments were that it was horrendous out there.
Well as you can guess after 3 days of good SE
winds which pushing us along we now have NW gale force winds in which we cannot
move forward at all.the waves would end up damaging the boat one way or another
and we would not be making any progress towards our destination for this leg of
Port Ghalib.
It took us 7 days to arrive at Port Berenice where
we have put in for shelter,on the first night out from Djibouti the wind got up
to 30 knts from the North so we decided to seek shelter in Port Obock and our
group of five anchored in the bay.As the wind abated overnight we left the
following morning with South Easterly winds which lasted on and off for 3 days
enabling us to make good progress northwards.
On passage we came upon one of our group who
left Djibouti a couple of days before us who were returning to
Djibouti as they had a problem with their fuel supply to the
engine.
Fortunately in the group behind us there was on one
of the boats a diesel engineer who boarded their boat and fixed the faults
otherwise they would have been faced with a 150nm voyage against the wind and in
an area where there are pirates.We and all of our boats stood by most of the day
ready to assist in whatever way we could until the other group with the engineer
arrived.
The diesel engineer was a skipper on another boat
in another group some 20nm or 4hrs behind us.Everybody was relieved when the
engine was fixed because there by the grace....... go the rest of us,we are at
times all reliant on one another.
Well now you are up to date after 2 days the wind
turned and here we are,the latest weather forecast indicates that we can
possibly leave tomorrow morning and then we may have a safe 48hr weather window
to get to our destination.The wind will still be Northerly but it is expected to
drop to 10knts which will mean perhaps 15knts on the nose to us but it will take
all of those 48hrs to get there.
Always remember its not the wind that hurts it's
the waves and after the wind drops it takes a while for the sea to calm down,out
here the wind changes with a speed that I have not seen very often.
That's it for now
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