Trading our way out of it....
Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Sun 10 Apr 2011 06:26
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Sunday 1143 Local 0544 UTC
06:10.47N 081:44.34E
Here we are no only seventy miles to run to our
waypoint at the south of Sri Lanka and just under a hundred miles in total to
run to Galle the port of entry.
Yesterday I decided that we had to just drift and
wait for some breeze. The sea is oily flat during the middle of the day and each
of the last few nights a breeze of five knots or so fills in around
midnight.
Last night we had been drifting then ghosting with
our spinaker up and then on my watch ....... six, seven then eight! knots
of breeze. We were tanking along for two glorious hours at seven to eight knots
with my peak speed being 8.8 knots. However the whole watch only delivered 22
miles made good to our waypoint. Charging along powered up, but not overly
so through the midnight and quartermoon lit Indian Ocean night cleared the
memory very quickly of the past weeks hassles.
One cannot help but mentally recompute ETA's which
may even if the wind would only keep up have us in the anchorage at Galle
awaiting our security clearance tonight. However though I knew then and
certainly know now it was not to last for very long. We did however sail all
through the night though sometimes well below two knots! More of
a controlled drift really.
The next issue we have is that while it is fine
not to use the engine and to sail, then sooner than later the generator or
main engine has to go on to charge the batteries. We winched manually refrained
from using the loos, sailed with no lights and of course manually helmed. Radar
of course was off and everything else too. However we can not get consumption
right down and at least our freezer and fridge will keep running, or trying to
run in thge case of the fridge. We can certainly sail the boat with no
power but we will loose the freezer, all navigation instruments and of
course the auto pilot. So we are compelled to use the engine just to generate
power for the batteries (we cannot use the generator now as we are too low on
fuel in that tank to feed it) even if we could sail the whole route. So the
arithmetic continues. The trick is to try and guage how to use the last few
hours of fuel to coincide with when there would be no wind and when our
batteries most need charging.
This morning we encountered a couple then many
fishing boats and while they were hailing us wanting cigarettes
we rendevouzed with one and turned the tables on them. We traded
for 30 litres of "deisel". We made a ship to ship transfer at close
quarters, sometimes very close, and hauled aboard our deisel. There was an
initial stand off about who would commit their side of the bargain and we sent
over some cold drinks to them as a sign of good faith. They then sent the
"deisel" to us and we sent them back some Euros.
The "deisel" however contained the thickest
dirtiest sludge that must have come out of the bottom of his tank. I am sure it
was not intended and the happy exchange was very uplifting of moral aboard
Rhiann Marie. It wasn't low mind. I have warned all the crew time and time again
that low moral will just not be tolerated......
We made a further trade with a second boat. A nice
tuna for tonights dinner for four tinnies. At a distance of three metres or so
he hurled the tuna to me which I caught, thankfully. They were so happy to
trade with us and the excitement and jollyness of them was uplifting. In fact
after sending us the Tuna though they had asked for cigarettes initially they
seemed to be satisfied to offer it as a gift but we sent over the drinks to
them anyway and everyone was happy!
Not long after we sighted several whales off our
starboard side between us and an emergent coast of Sri Lanka in the haze to the
North West. we are hoping for a sea breeze to develop and suck us along the
coast for at least forty if not fifty miles.
Showers have been authorised today using up the
last of our water as we can surely reach port tomorrow or Tuesday at
latest.
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