POSITION REPORT ON TUESDAY 28 JULY 2015

The Alba Chronicles
Neville Howarth
Mon 27 Jul 2015 23:02

POSITION REPORT ON TUESDAY 28 JULY 2015 AT 0800

 

09:31S   137:46E

 

So far we've done 600 miles with 425 miles to go. We did 165 miles in the last 24 hours.  We’ve got sunshine with scattered clouds and 25-30 knot SE winds.  We’re rolling downwind, wing-on-wing with 2 metre seas.  Here's what we did yesterday and overnight.

 

27 July 2015  Papua New Guinea to Indonesia (Day 4)

The morning started off overcast, but soon turned into a nice, sunny day.  The wind was consistent at 18-22 knots and we poled the genoa out to port running on a very broad reach. The waves started to build up a bit, causing us to surf at up to 9 knots at times and we began to roll more often.  However, it's not as bad as the east side of the Torres Straits.

 

Glenys used up the last of her pressure-cooked stew last night, so I was allowed to fish and within two hours had hauled in a nice 3 foot Tuna.  I bled it to stop the meat being too red.  This  entailed making a slit in the flesh behind each pectoral fin to cut the main artery along the spine; slitting the lower part of both gills; tying a rope around the tail and then dropping the fish back into the water for ten minutes ...  then praying that a shark didn't come along. 

 

I filleted the fish on the bucking aft deck and Glenys then split the fish into five meals, vacuum packing four lots and leaving enough for dinner and some lunches.  We had fried fish sandwiches for lunch, of course.

 

We had a glorious afternoon and night brought us a 3/4 moon and clear skies. The wind picked up a little to 20-25 knots and backed 20 degrees, so we rolled downwind at 6-7 knots all night.  We also had a favourable 1/2 to 1 knot current, so we made very good progress.

 

We put the clocks back an hour, so we both got an extra 30 minutes in bed - luxury!  On my 1-4 watch, I encountered a small fleet of ten fishing boats, which fortunately were well lit and moving slowly, so were easy to avoid.