POSITION REPORT ON SUNDAY 22 JANUARY 2017

The Alba Chronicles
Neville Howarth
Sun 22 Jan 2017 01:15

POSITION REPORT ON SUNDAY 22 JANUARY 2017 AT 0700

 

08:25N   096:33E

 

So far we've done 112 miles with 296 miles to go. We’ve got sunshine with scattered clouds and 20 knot East winds.  We’re on a starboard broad reach with 1.5 metre seas.  Here's what we did yesterday and overnight.

 

21 January 2017 Nai Harn Bay to Port Blair, Andaman Islands (Day 1)

The weather forecast hadn’t changed, so we were good to go.  I used qtVlm to calculate the best route, which predicted that it would take us two days and 15 hours to get to Port Blair.  If we left at midday, we’d get there at 03:00 on the 24th, so there was no rush to leave.

 

We spent the morning pottering about, tidying up and Glenys cooked a pork stew, which will feed us for the first two evenings.  As always when waiting to depart, we’re very restless, not really nervous, just hate the waiting.  After a sandwich at noon, we cracked up and pulled up the anchor.

 

The first part of the afternoon, was lovely with the wind abaft the beam at 15-20 knots, but the wind slowly backed, so we ended up with the apparent wind at 60-70 degrees.  Fortunately, the wind strength dropped to 10-15 knots, so it was pleasant even though we were harder on the wind.

 

Overnight the wind gradually veered by 60 degrees, putting the wind at 40 degrees off our starboard quarter and causing the genoa to lose the wind behind the main.  So, at our 04:00 watch change, I was doing the pole dance on the front deck, rigging up our spinnaker pole so that we could pole the genoa out to windward on the starboard side.  With this configuration, the genoa stays filled all the time and we rolled along happily at 6 knots.

 

We’ve had a fairly good run, averaging 5.9 knots, but I reckon that we’re 20 miles behind the position forecast by qtVlm, so I need to tweak our Boat Polar.