East coast current
20 October 2009 | 288 miles to Bundaberg
Bernie
We continued to make good progress towards our destination Bundaberg on the Australian coast. The wind has continued to blow at around 20+ knots from the SE causing the seas to further build. At night you can't see the waves, but at dawn this morning we were amazed we had been sailing over some small mountains of water, but as the day wore on we got used to their size and confidence increased that First Light III could cope with them. Although we did cop the odd wave breaking smack on top of us with a crash of cascading water all over the deck. Thank God for our dodger over the companionway. It was a pleasant surprise to notice that our speed across the ground from the GPS showed a knot faster than our speed in the water. Our increased speed across the ground is courtesy of the south flowing East Australian Current and for once we are getting the benefit of it.
I received an email from Dianne today informing me that our son Simon competing in the Mini Transat solo transatlantic race has been listed NC on the website and his progress on the tracking website has stopped. We don't know what this means, presumably he has a problem of some sort. We hope he is OK and await further information.