Position Update - Arafura Sea, noon 18th July 2019
Vega
Hugh and Annie
Thu 18 Jul 2019 06:23
After a cloudy and showery start to the day with the wind backing and taking us off course to the south, normal trade wind sailing has now resumed with hardly a cloud in the sky and a steady 15 - 17kts of breeze. You would think that in these conditions we would run along at 6kts or so and in fact in the last 24 hours we have averaged just that. If we can keep this up we will arrive on Sunday. However, our speed seems to be heavily tide dependent and when we have wind against tide our speed is frustratingly low at between 4.5 and 5.5kts. On the other hand, when we have the tide with us we sail at up to 7kts.
Our attitude to speed is also conditioned by the fact that we are in a rally. As the smallest boat (there are three 37 footers and nothing smaller) we go the slowest and would have to drive hard to keep up with the rest. This makes things a tad frustrating as we don’t like constantly driving hard (wear and tear on both the boat and our nerves) and we always have this feeling of being left behind. We can see other yachts on AIS at up to about 10nm and watch their triangles disappear from our screen as they forge ahead. We can keep in radio contact at up to about 20nm but after 10nm the static increases and the voice on the other end begins to fade. Eventually we will catch up after a longer period at sea and hope that there is still space in the anchorage. One option may be to leave the anchorage earlier than the others but I can well see why there is a size limit for many longer distance rallies.
There have been encounters up ahead with fishing boats, fishing nets (miles long and suspended on lit floats) and floating lines in the water. We couldn’t find a slot to lift
out of the water and re-fit our rope cutter before we left Australia so will need to be extra vigilant.