St Helena Outbound Day 10

Hi everyone,
We are currently in position 10 48S 023 08W, saillng at 5 knots on a course of 350M. The wind is SE at 15-18 knots with a 2m SE sea and a 1.5m S swell.  We are sailing under double-reefed main and full yankee.  Mid-level overcast.  Our day's run was 137nm, our DMG was 102nm and we have 2838nm to go.

We didn't make as much progress as hoped since the winds decreased overnight and we stuck with the headsail-only rig.  Despite this we did better in DMG than we did for several days "working the angles".  It feels slow but the DMG is what counts.  This is a lesson in patience - as if after 55 years I'm going to get some of that! ;)

Yesterday afternoon winds were 20-25 knots from the ESE and we made good progress with two furls in the yankee.    The wind gradually dropped to 18-22 knots in the evening and then progressively down to 14-16 knots by morning.  The skies were partly cloudy last night.

This morning we've been cruising along under this rig to see how it goes in lighter winds of 12-14 knots.  We were slowing down but happily the wind has filled in a little and we now have 16-18 knots.  At 0900 we gybed onto stbd tack to close the rhumb line to our waypoint.

My reading is becoming more varied as my stock of SciFi eBooks is consumed.  Recently I've read:

• The Lost World (sorta SciFi-ish)
• Brave New World (SciFi)
• Pinnochio (for light relief - I don't think I read it as a boy)
• The 39 Steps
• World Without End

We also listen to a lot of BBC podcasts:

• Desert Island Disks (current and the 600 or so archive episodes)
• Thinking Allowed (general)
• Discovery (science)
• History Extra (yes, history)
• The Life Scientific (interviews with prominent scientists)
• The Infinite Monkey Cage (relativity can be funny!)

We used to listen to the ABC's "Starstuff" podcast which had excellent stories of space exploration at it happened.  Sadly it was discontinued in at the end of last year.

I've also been reconfiguring our Icom M802 HF/SSB radio for the Caribbean and North Atlantic.  Things like replacing Australian and South African voice and fax weather stations with US and European stations.  And changing from Indian Ocean cruiser net frequencies to those used in the Caribbean.