Maritime professionals have always been a bit obsessed with keeping track of the particulars of a voyage by use of logbooks, spreadsheets and abstracts. Often this is done as a routine to good watch keeping and seamanship, often it is done for regulation sake. The information collected is rarely reflected on, however sometimes it can prove useful when making adjustments to improve performance. Myself being a maritime professional I feel a bit obliged to take a look at the daily logs and see if there is anything to be learned. That and being on a yacht at sea there is plenty of spare time and I cant pass up the opportunity to occupy my mind. Ill share a little of week one statistics.

Falklands to Capetown- 3356 nautical miles (Nm)great circle route Miles to go (MTG)- 2652 Miles made good(MMG)- 704 Miles from Stanley- 755 Total miles sailed- 763 (this is not just basic addition and subtraction if you are thinking I need to get a new calculator. The great circle route would be the shortest possible way to Capetown, however that route would have taken us more southerly and close to the Antarctic convergence zone which is where icebergs live. on the contrary it if we were to go too far to the north we might end up in the large stationary high pressure systems of the south Atlantic where there is little or no wind and since we only carry 250 liters of fuel, enough to motor about 500 miles, we could end taking a much longer to get to Capetown. The miles from the Falklands are in a straight line, and the total miles sailed are the daily runs we have made with the zig and zag with the change of the wind.) Average daily run- 109 average boat speed-4.5kts average wind est. 18-20 kts max wind speed- 38-40 kts in squall gusts calm- 4 hours just leaving falklands engine hours-4 fuel con. 8 liters heater hours-5 fuel con. 1 liter total fuel consumption- 9 liters fuel remaining- 241 liters conclusion- I think we are doing well so far, we haven't broken anything and the seasickness is gone. From here we will try to follow our great circle route to make the distance as short as possible, wind allowing of course. Unfortunately Tristan de Cuna is right in middle of this huge stationary high pressure now and it seems unlikely we will be able to try and go there as we plan to skirt this high to its south and stay in the favorable wind. That means we will be approaching Capetown from the southwest and then there are the currents and SE gales that frequent that area to contend with. We are still working on that, one step at a time for now.