Current Position: 27 35.942’S 12 14.920’E; Timezone: UTC+2; SOG: 5.9 kt; COG: 325; TWS: 19; TWD: 198; Current Speed: 1.4 kt; Current Direction: 280; Distance to Waypoint (BAR1, 345): 322 nm; Distance to Endpoint (Bridgetown): 48752 nm; Total Miles Sailed: 17128 nm; Engine Hours: 409; Estimate Fuel: 60+12+50;
Comments: Sunset should be at 19:48 at 14.25E, but clouds prevented me from seeing it. At 18:00 the wind was 17 with a favorable current giving a SOG of 6.6 kt. There appears to be relatively little commercial traffic tonight, so I set alarms for 1h intervals beginning at 20:40. I did not encounter a single ship, but at 1:30 was awaken because the boat had changed speed … it was doing 7 kt in 18 kt wind. Gusts up to 17 were expected, but the wind speed was sustained. The extra wind was accompanied by the expected backing of the wind from 190 to 170, so the course had changed more westerly. The trace suggested that backing occurred 2h earlier. The course now was essentially away from BAR1 and towards St. Helena. Per my plan to go with the flow, I did not correct the course. Curious, I downloaded a new GRIB at 3:00. The updated forecast predicted the increase in wind earlier. I can expect this wind for at least the next 48h. At 3:30 I encountered the first ship of the night, the tanker Habrut that passed within 0.5 nm (2.5 ship lengths for the 1100’ vessel). It was quite enough that I could hear its massive engines. Because I was drifting into the shipping lane that wraps around Guinea, Senegal, etc., I adjusted my course more northerly, even though that slowed the boat down (I was still averaging over 6 kt). When I leave the Benguela current and head W in a couple of days, I will cut across the shipping lane and not linger. It was almost 7:00 when I got up. Sunrise must have been around 6:15, but I slept because I was wearing a mask. It was dark, mostly cloudy, the seas were bigger than yesterday, and the cockpit was wet and uninviting. I am glad I took advantage yesterday and spent most of the day outside. The wind was still blowing nearly 20, and I believe it had been doing that since about 23:00 last night (hence the bigger seas). For the second night in a row I had gotten 10h sleep, albeit punctuated by hourly checks. I had only encountered one ship last night, in contrast to the dozens that had to be avoided earlier in the passage. I am in a sweet spot, just E of the shipping lane and W of the fishing trawlers along the coast. My course is somewhere in between BAR1 and St. Helena. I suspect I will pass well W of BAR1 (370 nm away) on Friday, but I will still need to make a decision whether to continue northerly or begin heading more westerly. I have begun to run some weather models to help in making the decision, which will be weighed heavily whether I continue to have the advantage of the Benguela current and whether a high has developed in the middle of the South Atlantic. I downloaded the most recent GRIB at 9:00. It seems a high pressure trough is going to develop S of the rhumb line to St. Helena towards the end of this week, whereas winds will continue on a northerly course until early next week. This may favor continuing N to about 20S (500 nm or so), near the Namibia/Angola border, before heading more westerly. This would be perhaps Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning and would mark the halfway point between Saldanha and St. Helena, although I would probably pass N of the latter and more towards Ascension. It has now been one week since I provisioned the boat in Hout Bay. I spent 1-2d more in Saldanha than expected. I need to start thinking about the longevity of the fresh food. I cannot afford to waste anything. Specifically, I need to eat the chicken breast, chicken soup, a quiche, and two pizzas by this weekend. I have enough chicken soup for two days, but I have a package of squash soup that will make two meals with the quiche. I will eat 1/4 of the quiche and the soup each of the next four days. I will eat the pizzas the end of the week (Saturday/Sunday). This is not Christmas food, but I will save the smoked salmon for early next week, when I should be in the trade winds and have calm seas (making proper cooking easier). I am working my way through the usual pecking order of fruit … bananas/grapes, pears, citrus, and apples. I ate half a papaya, but the other half was damaged and had already gone bad. I need to finish the grapes and bananas during the next week … the pears next week. Once I clear the other fresh food out of the fridge, I will move the oranges, grapefruit, and (if I have room) the apples into the fridge. By the time I pass St. Helena, I will be out of all the fresh food besides some fruit and maybe some leftover ham. I will still have five weeks of sailing. I expect to have a piece of fresh fruit and eggs each day for the remainder of the trip, but everything else will come from the non-perishable meal packs I made at Hout Bay. By 10:30 the clouds were gone and it had turned into a nice day. At 11:30 I came upon the fishing trawler Spencer Bay. It was sailing patterns in front of me and I had no way of predicting where it would be when we crossed paths. I went to the cockpit to take control of the tiller should the vessel cross my path again. Half a nm ahead of me, just as I was about to make radio contact, the trawler stopped passing back and forth in front of me and motored a nm away to my port. At 12:15 I was on a collision course with the cargo ship Julia N. Less than 9 nm apart, I changed my course and radioed the captain to pass starboard to starboard and he confirmed. We passed about 0.5 nm apart and I resumed my course. The distance sailed towards BAR1 in the last 24h was 457-322=135 nm. The total distance sailed was 17128-16960=168 (168/24=7.0 kt avg).
Comments: Sunset should be at 19:48 at 14.25E, but clouds prevented me from seeing it. At 18:00 the wind was 17 with a favorable current giving a SOG of 6.6 kt. There appears to be relatively little commercial traffic tonight, so I set alarms for 1h intervals beginning at 20:40. I did not encounter a single ship, but at 1:30 was awaken because the boat had changed speed … it was doing 7 kt in 18 kt wind. Gusts up to 17 were expected, but the wind speed was sustained. The extra wind was accompanied by the expected backing of the wind from 190 to 170, so the course had changed more westerly. The trace suggested that backing occurred 2h earlier. The course now was essentially away from BAR1 and towards St. Helena. Per my plan to go with the flow, I did not correct the course. Curious, I downloaded a new GRIB at 3:00. The updated forecast predicted the increase in wind earlier. I can expect this wind for at least the next 48h. At 3:30 I encountered the first ship of the night, the tanker Habrut that passed within 0.5 nm (2.5 ship lengths for the 1100’ vessel). It was quite enough that I could hear its massive engines. Because I was drifting into the shipping lane that wraps around Guinea, Senegal, etc., I adjusted my course more northerly, even though that slowed the boat down (I was still averaging over 6 kt). When I leave the Benguela current and head W in a couple of days, I will cut across the shipping lane and not linger. It was almost 7:00 when I got up. Sunrise must have been around 6:15, but I slept because I was wearing a mask. It was dark, mostly cloudy, the seas were bigger than yesterday, and the cockpit was wet and uninviting. I am glad I took advantage yesterday and spent most of the day outside. The wind was still blowing nearly 20, and I believe it had been doing that since about 23:00 last night (hence the bigger seas). For the second night in a row I had gotten 10h sleep, albeit punctuated by hourly checks. I had only encountered one ship last night, in contrast to the dozens that had to be avoided earlier in the passage. I am in a sweet spot, just E of the shipping lane and W of the fishing trawlers along the coast. My course is somewhere in between BAR1 and St. Helena. I suspect I will pass well W of BAR1 (370 nm away) on Friday, but I will still need to make a decision whether to continue northerly or begin heading more westerly. I have begun to run some weather models to help in making the decision, which will be weighed heavily whether I continue to have the advantage of the Benguela current and whether a high has developed in the middle of the South Atlantic. I downloaded the most recent GRIB at 9:00. It seems a high pressure trough is going to develop S of the rhumb line to St. Helena towards the end of this week, whereas winds will continue on a northerly course until early next week. This may favor continuing N to about 20S (500 nm or so), near the Namibia/Angola border, before heading more westerly. This would be perhaps Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning and would mark the halfway point between Saldanha and St. Helena, although I would probably pass N of the latter and more towards Ascension. It has now been one week since I provisioned the boat in Hout Bay. I spent 1-2d more in Saldanha than expected. I need to start thinking about the longevity of the fresh food. I cannot afford to waste anything. Specifically, I need to eat the chicken breast, chicken soup, a quiche, and two pizzas by this weekend. I have enough chicken soup for two days, but I have a package of squash soup that will make two meals with the quiche. I will eat 1/4 of the quiche and the soup each of the next four days. I will eat the pizzas the end of the week (Saturday/Sunday). This is not Christmas food, but I will save the smoked salmon for early next week, when I should be in the trade winds and have calm seas (making proper cooking easier). I am working my way through the usual pecking order of fruit … bananas/grapes, pears, citrus, and apples. I ate half a papaya, but the other half was damaged and had already gone bad. I need to finish the grapes and bananas during the next week … the pears next week. Once I clear the other fresh food out of the fridge, I will move the oranges, grapefruit, and (if I have room) the apples into the fridge. By the time I pass St. Helena, I will be out of all the fresh food besides some fruit and maybe some leftover ham. I will still have five weeks of sailing. I expect to have a piece of fresh fruit and eggs each day for the remainder of the trip, but everything else will come from the non-perishable meal packs I made at Hout Bay. By 10:30 the clouds were gone and it had turned into a nice day. At 11:30 I came upon the fishing trawler Spencer Bay. It was sailing patterns in front of me and I had no way of predicting where it would be when we crossed paths. I went to the cockpit to take control of the tiller should the vessel cross my path again. Half a nm ahead of me, just as I was about to make radio contact, the trawler stopped passing back and forth in front of me and motored a nm away to my port. At 12:15 I was on a collision course with the cargo ship Julia N. Less than 9 nm apart, I changed my course and radioed the captain to pass starboard to starboard and he confirmed. We passed about 0.5 nm apart and I resumed my course. The distance sailed towards BAR1 in the last 24h was 457-322=135 nm. The total distance sailed was 17128-16960=168 (168/24=7.0 kt avg).