Southern Knights
Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Mon 20 Jun 2011 13:05
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Monday 20th June 1630 Local Time 1230
UTC
26:24.432S 046:19.856E
Everything so far has been going according to the
game plan. We are just about at the southern most point of Madagascar and are
passing about 70 miles south, I hope its far enough off. We still have about 100
miles to go to clear the south of this enormous island country and until then we
are keeping a close eye on the sea conditions we have been warned
about.
We have been sailing relatively conservatively. The
last two days we made 190 and 202 miles good to Durban. We could go harder
but as the seas are very big and we are threading our way through various
weather patterns, this suits us.
There is a lot more traffic around now and watches
need to be much more vigilant. One 700 foot long ship was coming up behind
us yesterday and altered to overtake just as our wind improved. He must have
been bamboozled as he took about 12 hours to crawl past us. We had a chat on the
VHF and he asked where we were headed and where we came from. "WOW!" he
exclaimed when he heard we were sailing round the world and trying to head
back to Europe this year!
It has been an interesting challenge to try to read
the weather for our passage, the various systems coming through, the compression
between highs and lows interacting, the various "waves" (fronts) we are
encountering, the South Madagascar confluence zone etc. We have been
weaving our way through these obstacles just like we have on a smaller scale
tacked and gybed round reefs. So far we have been gybing, using our barber
hauler, fitting a preventer to the boom, poling out the genoa to windward, using
the jib full canvas and fully reefed hard on the wind! So its been non
stop but we are charging down the track on our fine
steed.
Now about to enter the Mozambique channel tomorrow
we have additional considerations. The largest of which is a severe low - a
"Southerly Buster" forecasting a solid wall of 40 knot winds barring our way to
Durban at the ned of the week. These are exactly the conditions that
generate the huge standing waves with a southwesterly over the Agulhas current
which can run at upto six knots head on to the wind. Not a nice prospect and in
fact one we cannot sail into. I have read reports of 20m standing waves - no
thank you. While I have found the GRIB files for weather incredibly accurate on
the whole, I have definitely found the computer modelling, understandably, is
not so accurate five to seven days out. Let's hope......
For the next few days we are again forecast to be
hard on the wind for the second half (725nm) of the passage. The game plan will
be to sail as hard as we can on the rhumb line and hard on the wind to Durban as
soon as we round Madagascar and if the forecast low develops bear away and
perhaps head to Richards Bay or in fact further up the coast if need be.
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