Friday 23 November 2012

Skip Tone has had a frustrating night (or rather early hours of the morning). He has been handsteering through the variable winds, been backwinded several times, and watched miserably as our VMG (velocity made good) disappeared into the negatives. On top of that he has not been able to get a clear enough HF connection to send off his GRIB request or check email so it will be up to the sat phone later this morning to deliver those (and this blog).

I�'d gone below off watch hours earlier when we�'d first lost the wind, happily falling asleep to the purr of the iron topsail. Coming back to the cockpit, with both of us half asleep, it takes time for each person to adjust to the changeover and reset their focus. No wonder those changeover conversations can be so fraught but also sometimes really weird�... Tone is not a big seafood eater at the best of times so he must have thought I was still dreaming when I presented the option of calamari for breakfast. The wee creature had appeared overnight, as if to order, on the galley floor. The swell is only moderate (less than 1.5 metres, although the occasional set over 2 metres rolls by). We�'d had a few rock and roll moments earlier in the night as rain and baby thunderstorms passed over, with gusts up to 20k, so I had closed all the hatches. I must have re-opened the small hatch over the galley when I came below at 2.00am, and the squid definitely wasn�'t there then. How it had aimed itself so perfectly through that tiny opening, presumably in an accompanying torrent of water, without us noticing, is a mystery.

As, seemingly, is our ETA at �"the corner�", our waypoint at the bottom of the Louisiades, still 254 nm away. Seeing our arrival date into Gizo stretching out, we have toyed with the idea of taking a short cut through the the Jomard Entrance north of the Louisiades. However the variable winds, tidal rips, strong currents, possible thunderstorms, and a chart warning showing heavy breakers, combined with a late afternoon arrival to negotiate the reefs makes that seem like a tired brain idea. So we will take the prudent (wimpy?) option and just keep ticktacking to our corner, despite the extra day at sea and extra 90nm. When we are on a �'good tack�' (equals good VMG) optimism overrides the logistics of navigational reality and I can see us sipping on a Solly beer early next week. And then we inevitably turn back onto our �'bad�' tack, and it feels like we will bob around out here for another month. The enormity of the ocean, stretching from horizon to horizon, compared to the pace we are sloshing our way across it makes it very hard to understand the scale of our journey. Tone piped up one afternoon - �" you know, TI to Gizo, it�'s a bit like jogging from Melbourne to Brisbane. Put that way it doesn�'t sound so bad.�" �"Not so bad�" I snorted into my coffee. �"It sounds plain dumb!�"

Today�'s weather forecast continues to look good, the reassuring - �"warnings-nil�" - warms the cockles of my heart - as always. Bye for now from dumb and dumber in the beautiful (and bountiful!) Coral Sea.