A really slow day
24 February 2015 | 145 miles west of Phuket
Bill Sunny and hot
It's now day two of our crossing and things have gotten much better. The winds that started appearing at 1800 have continued. Sometimes light--1-2 knots and sometimes more 7-8 knots with an occasional gust to 10. Right now(it's just after 1000) it's at 7.5 and we are thrilled to have it. In our first 24 hours, we managed to do 100 miles. About half under motor but the rest and the best was under sail all night. We even pushed the envelope by not reducing sails at night. We ran with a full genoa, forestaysail and a full main. Most times, we put a reef in the main and roll in the genoa. Most times, at night is when the really bad stuff happens.
Some things we have noticed. First there appears to be rivers of currents running along our way. The seas will be nice and flat--1 foot swell and then we see a band of turbulent water ahead of us with white caps. No increase in wind but far more disturbed seas. Don't appear to slow us down, but they sure do make us rock a good bit more. As quickly as they come, they are gone. Depth makes no difference as we have seen these in water 275 feet deep.
Another is the night skies. When we were along the coast coming up the Malacca Straits, we hardly ever saw stars or if we did, not that many due to the constant burning of fields in both Thailand and Malaysia. I'm sure Indonesia has the same problem. Farmers clearing more land for crops. Out here, it's clear since we are west of the burning.
We just hit another of the "rivers". The seas went from 1 foot to 3 with white caps in a matter of seconds and two minutes later, they were gone.
The Sun is bright and the day promises to be another hot one. I'll let you know.
it's now 2145 and the Sun has long since set. The day proved to be hot and just about windless. Some times we had just 1.5 knots of wind. Sometimes up to 5 but rarely more than that. We've been slowly gliding along at about 3 knots for most of the day. We did 100 yesterday but doubt we will do that today. As of right now, we've done just 44 in the last 13 hours so you can see that while we are progressing west(a good thing), we are doing it SLOWLY!! Hey, slow is safe and by are we safe, Other than the occasional freighter coming our way and the strange current rivers we run through from time to time. We are moving along just fine. While slow, it beats becalmed.
Strangely, we lost our AIS(Automatic Identification System) this afternoon. We thing we are still broadcasting but our computer receivers have stopped receiving. Now, it's just our eyes to keep watch. We can't plan for the future seeing ships dozens of miles away. Just hitting another set of the turbulent water current. It lasts for just a few minutes and then we are through it. Doesn't affect our speed but sure makes a bunch of noise as the water slaps against the hull. This one lasted about a minute and was gone. Normally, it's about 5 minutes.
We still have the night ahead of us. Let's hope for just a bit more wind. We could use it.
We
--------------090905030400060002010907--