Slowing down again
07 March 2015 | 05 18.061N:077 29.391E
Bill/Sunny and still hot.
Over night, the wind has dropped again to darn close to nothing but what there is is allowing us to still head west toward the Maldives. The seas have thankfully calmed a bit so we are no longer being tossed around. With our progression west, the Sun was coming up later and later so we turned our clocks back an hour to compensate. Now the Sun comes up just before 0700 instead of 0800.
For the last two days it's been a progression of going for 10 to 15 miles and turning to head northwest then go another 10 to 15 miles and turn and go southwest. Over and over. For a time yesterday we did have good winds that allowed us to go straight west. We will see what today brings. It's just before sunrise and with the wind so light, it's hard to keep us on a steady course. Tracy comes on watch in 30 minutes and we will make the plans for what to do now as later is well later with conditions to be figured out then.
Tracy came on watch at 0700 and we immediately changed sail direction now heading more westerlies pushing us along to the southwest. After a quick breakfast(blackberry jam on cream crackers and sugar free Tang), I headed off fora nicest thing nap. A couple of hours later, with no wind and only the current to push us along, we started up the engine. The batteries were in need of a charging so we started the engine and put her in gear to at least get more out of the diesel we were using. At 1200rpm,we were doing over 6 knots thanks to the current helping us along. The batteries and at least two computers were getting charged so all was well.
We had another great lunch of Pad Thai. Nice and softly spiced and tasting great. By 1400, after a nice shower(inside, not rain) the wind--almost 5 knots of it came up so we rolled out the Genoa and pulled up the forestaysail, shut off the engine and we were moving along at just about 4 knots. Given the wind, that's just fine with us. I turned on "James", our Hydrovane wind autopilot and let him do his job--steering the boat. He does a great job for us. We will see how the afternoon goes. We are maintaining a course of 265 just below the 05 15 latitude.
It's now 2245 and Tracy will be coming on watch soon. Wind has shifted and is now coming out of the northwest. Not much of it but since that is where we need to head, it's going to slow us down. We've reduced sails so that we are still moving forward but at a slower speed until the wind changes back to the northeast as it is supposed to. Meanwhile we head west at a whopping 2.1 knots but heck, some movement beats wallowing in dead wind seas. We'll see what the rest of the night is like.
At about 0200, we started up the engine as the wind had died off again and there was a fishing net we needed to avoid. At least the fishermen out here put lights on their nets at night.. What wind we have is now coming from the southwest so we will see what day break brings.