2015 Cruising Summary - Fremantle to Simon's Town

Hi everyone,
Having completed our sailing for this year a summary seems appropriate.

Track...

Zen Again 2015 Track

Statistics...

• Overall
• Distance Logged (ie through the water) = 6751 nm
• Sea Time = 1194 hours (49 days 18 hours)
• Percent Sea Time (of 183 total days) = 27%
• Engine
• Engine Hours = 278 hours
• Percent Engine Time = 23%
• Speeds
• Average Daily Run = 136 nm
• Average Speed = 5.6 knots

Interestingly our final passage of the year filled the last page of our current log book.  Twas meant to be!

Chasing the sunset

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

• Good
• Zen Again (thanks again to Ken Hayashi, Yamazaki Yachts and Precision Shipwrights)
• Mainsail and Yankee (thanks to Extreme Sails)
• Autopilot (did a fantastic job in challenging conditions, except see below)
• Manson Supreme anchor
• Iridium Go! with Satphone.me email
• PredictWind weather data
• Vesper XB-8000 AIS - not just for AIS but also for its WiFi broadcast of instrument data
• SEAiq chartplotter app
• Icom IC-M802 HF radio
• Aries vane gear (did a good job in regular seas - we're using it more & more)
• Fridge (our new fridge has been on continuously for 6 months - marvellous)
• And of course all the great people we've met and friends we've made
• Bad
• Our autopilot rams only lasted 5000nm each - two failed enroute
• Ugly
• Over-galvanised chain (we've been hauling up the chain by hand since Rodrigues)
• Tuzi Gazi marina in Richards Bay deconstructing itself during each southerly buster
• Port Elizabeth ship loader "fallout" of manganese dust

So here we are in the South Atlantic, or at least west of Cape Agulhas.  The Cape of Good Hope is still to the west of us but only a few miles (literally).  We feel we've "eaten the elephant" (see here) and achieved our goals for the year.

Eat Who?  Only metaphorically big boy!

Do we love the cruising life or what?

Next year's goal is as ambitious as this year's.  We'll talk about that in a post early next year.