Benguela Current
11 October 2017 | 150 Miles Northwest of Cape Town South Africa
7:00pm Wednesday 10th October 2017 ( UTC+2 ) I took this photo just as the sun was rising when 50 miles Northwest of Cape Town. If you use your imagination you can see the fabled Table Mountain just to the right. It was a quiet night with a little traffic, noticeable for a 60 metre tug towing a 190 metre cargo ship to Cape Town, making 4 knots. The winds were light but as the morning advanced they got up and with full sail we found ourselves making over eight knots, no doubt helped by the Benguela Current which always flows north along the South African and Namibian coast and has a charted strength of a half to two knots. The PredictWind is only giving it about 3/4 knot as this is one of the less favoured months and I have settled to run between the 1000m contour to the right and the 2000 m contour to the left. I think I might have nailed it with a run of 100 miles sunup to sundown. With the dead flat sea starting to develop a swell and with full sail on a quartering breeze of about 16 knots the vessel was starting to s lew and round up so though I have been saving the autopilot for emergencies I thought what the heck let's use it. Put on the gentlest setting it seemed to handle the conditions well once it settled down into its rhythm. The pilot and its electric steering ram has a good reputation so my thinking is why not use it when power is available through the wind generator and solar panels, and have the Windpilot as the emergency. The course and speed are better in these conditions and seeing I did so much dithering around in the Indian Ocean I thought it high time to get motivated. --------------000305050507010601070401--