08:09.796 124:55.019E

Alor

Thursday 9^th September 2010

Captain’s log:

Thursday 9th September 2010 towards Alor

Left as usual in a flat clam and motored until mid morning when the breeze arrived.  By the time we got to our anchorage it was blowing 25 knots and a lot of white sea.

 We spoke to a couple of Australian yachts anchored there waiting to return against the wind to Oz. The assured us that it usually calmed down at night; after a brief crew paw-wow it was decided to continue on to Kawula. 

Not sure if that was the right choice- it absolutely p*ssed down with lots of lightning around zero visibility, no moon and loads of fish rafts around.  We ended up going another 10 miles offshore to avoid the rafts, then the wind instruments started to go haywire, as the wind had dropped.   By then we had decided to motor through the night.  I removed one of the GPS and put it in the oven in case of a lightning strike (Faraday's cage etc.).

 Both David and I were on watch at first, and then Ollie came up.  They did not call me until my watch at 11p.m., by which time we had diverted further out to sea, to give more sea room to all the floating fish pens, and the rain squalls!  I gave Ollie until 3 a.m., and that in turn gave David 6 hours sleep.  Or should have done, until Ollie then got more fish pens and squalls at 5.00 a.m., and called David up to assist again.