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