Wednesday 24 February 2016

St Helena Outbound Day 2

Hi everyone,
We are currently in position 15 22S 009 23W and saillng at 6 knots on a course of 280M. The wind is SE at 10-12 knots with a slight sea and a short 1.5m swell. We are sailing under full main and single-furled yankee. Broken mid-level clouds. Our day's run was 119nm and we have 3665nm to go.

Yesterday afternoon the winds remained light at about 8 knots, sometimes less. We dawdled along at 4 knots or so enjoying the sunny weather. Overnight the wind was steadier at 8 knots and we were doing 4-5 knots. It was a lovely moonlit night with gradually increasing cloud.

This morning we've had occasional sun but more often cloud overhead. The wind has strengthened to 10-12 knots which has helped our speed considerably. Our course is varying between 270M and 310M as cloud banks come and go. Our next waypoint is on a course of 310M so we're on the leading gybe. The GRIBs show we should have 10-15 knots of wind for the next few days. We're basically sailing around the South Atlantic high, and so the wind is gradually backing. We'll gybe north eventually.

I listened to the HF net on 4146kHz at 2000utc yesterday evening. I could hear several boats but they were very weak. They are sailing along the N coast of South America - more than 1500nm away. Hopefully a different net will emerge with other boats leaving St Helena and Ascension soon.

At noon today we are putting our clocks back again, having crossed into the UTC-1 time zone yesterday. The day's run was to noon UTC, so was 24 hours.

We were passed by one ship this morning. We only saw her on AIS and she passed 10nm away. She was doing 20 knots which is fairly fast. We keep a close eye on the AIS.

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