Quick Update - Thursday 08 May 2014. Hello to Class 2MI !
Tashi Delek
Mike & Carol Kefford
Thu 8 May 2014 23:39
We are very excited to learn from Dan, Mike's grandson, that Class 2MI at
the Australian International School in Singapore are following our progress
as part of their 'Where we are in Space and Time' Unit of Inquiry. Hello to
Mrs Miller, Dan and everyone in the Class! If anyone has any questions we
would be delighted to include the answers in the blogs and by email so just
get in touch whenever you like. We would love to hear a little bit more
about your class and what else you are learning about at the moment.
Distance run day 22 - 110nm
Day 23 - 96nm. But, this was only a 23 hour day because we changed time
zones as explained below.
Nautical miles left to run - 83. Hooray! We should drop anchor tomorrow
(Friday) in Hanavave Bay on the northern west coast of Fatu Hiva island in
the Marquesa Islands. We are really, really looking forward to it.
Depth under the boat- 3,812 metres.
Water temperature 27.1
Windspeed at 1400 hrs. 4 knots. Not enough.
Scones with strawberry jam and whipped cream for tea. Yum.
Fish caught. Zero.
Spookily, todays blog was going to have a time related theme anyway because
yesterday we put our clocks back by an hour when we crossed into another
time zone.
We are now UTC - 9, that is nine hours behind UTC time. UTC stands for
Universal Co-ordinated Time and is what we used to know as Greenwich Mean
Time until the French made a case for a more 'international' title!
Therefore, because it is British Summer Time in UK at the moment, which is
an hour ahead of UTC, we are currently 10 hours behind UK time.
The time zone changes every 15 degrees of Longitude so we have had to adjust
the clocks roughly every 7 days. If we didn't make the changes along the
way then it would be getting dark and coming light later and later according
to the clock on the wall. We would be hungry and wanting our breakfast
three hours before it got light and ready for supper when the sun was
overhead in the middle of the afternoon. That would be weird.
We have to be really careful when we cross into a new time zone that we
change every single clock on board and there are a lot of them. The one on
the wall over the chart table is very important because it is the one we use
the most, especially for when it is time to fill in the log book which we do
every three hours. There is a clock on our Chart Plotter (Sat Nav for
boats) so we update that as well. We have to change two alarm clocks
otherwise we would not wake up in time to do our 'watches' at night. Plus
two cameras, two computers and an IPad!
Finally we have to change some alarm times. As you know we speak to other
boats twice a day. The long range radio covers hundreds, sometimes
thousands, of miles so we could all be in different time zones which means
that for us on Tashi Delek the Radio Net could be at 6 am, but our friends
on a yacht called Dancing Bear are still in Galapagos which is three hours
ahead of us, so for them the radio net is at 9am. We have to really
concentrate to get this right because we get into a routine with the radio
net at a particular time and it seems to be difficult to readjust for some
reason.
We currently have about 10 knots of wind and are sailing at 4 knots so
expect to arrive in our anchorage late morning or early afternoon tomorrow.
That is only an estimate of course because we could end up travelling more
slowly or more quickly depending on what the wind and sea does over the next
24 hours. If the boat speed drops below 4 knots we are now putting the
engine on to give a bit of a boost to the speed. Not only do we want to
arrive in daylight but we would like to have several hours of daylight left
while we sort ourselves out and get our bearings.
Yesterday morning we spent the first couple of hours changing the way we had
the sails rigged because the wind had changed and we were not getting the
best out of it. Then the wind changed back and we were travelling more
slowly than ever so we had to change everything back again. Such is the
sailing life. The upside though was that because Mike was working on deck
at the front of the boat he noticed a grey patch in the water. It was huge,
and very close, about 30 meters away. It was humpback whale and even bigger
than Tashi Delek! It was gently swimming along the surface, not at all
interested in us. Because of the way they swim it is very difficult to take
a photograph of the whole thing above the water at the same time but we got
some great shots of it blowing. Fortunately we have the very excellent
Dorling Kindersley book of dolphins and whales on board so we are able to
identify what we see fairly easily. So far in the Pacific we have seen
Pilot Whales, a False Killer Whale and now the Humpback. In the Atlantic we
saw Minke Whales and Sperm Whales. We feel very privileged indeed.
We will update the blog again via the satellite phone once we have dropped
anchor but hope after that to find a wifi connection somewhere so that we
can add all the detail and photographs for Galapagos and for this passage.
We keep them in date order so you will need to check back down the list to
find them. Helpfully though they will be in a different colour to any that
you have already read.
All for now, all is well and getting better as we get closer to land.