{"id":1967,"date":"2025-07-09T03:23:35","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T03:23:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aegir-ran.com\/?p=1967"},"modified":"2025-07-09T06:18:41","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T06:18:41","slug":"captains-log-check-in-july-9-2025-400-utc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aegir-ran.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/09\/captains-log-check-in-july-9-2025-400-utc\/","title":{"rendered":"Captain\u2019s Log] Check-in July 9, 2025; 4:00 UTC"},"content":{"rendered":"
Current Position: 13 49.602\u2019S 161 47.577\u2019E; Local Timezone: UTC+21; SOG: 5.1 kt COG: 330; TWS: 17 kt; TWD: 120; Distance to Waypoint (R1, Raine Passage, 265): 1043; Total Miles Sailed: 7484 nm; Engine Hours: 169 Estimate Fuel: 59+14+50
\nComments: Despite a good day of sun yesterday, because of the mustard incident in the fridge and the fact I am heading NW (so the solar panels are shaded all afternoon), I found myself with a warm fridge and incompletely charged batteries at 15:00 and had to run the engine for 45m. At 16:00, the 45\u2019 catamaran Lani showed up on the AIS doing 4.6 kt at 283. I have been tracking it on PW. It was 14 nm forward of my starboard beam. Since I was doing about the same speed on 335, we were on collision courses that might have to be sorted out in about 2.5h (after sunset). They were clearly headed for the Torres Strait downwind with a spinnaker. Sunset was at about 17:52. It was the first time in a month I was able to see the sunset with a cloudless horizon. I was about 8 nm from Lani and we had not yet crossed each other\u2019s paths. It looked like Lani was going to cross my bow at a distance of 1-2 nm in about 90m. They had slowed to 3.8 kt and my speed had increased to 5.2 kt. Lani\u2019s captain Martin contacted me via VHF at 18:15. He is indeed headed for Port Kennedy. We briefly discussed strategies concerning the wind and concerning crossing the GBR. As a 45\u2019 catamaran, Lani is faster than my 38\u2019 monohull downwind, so we have different courses planned. We agreed to meet up at Thursday Island. He passed about 3 nm off my bow at 18:40. I downloaded new files at 19:20, mostly to get updated long-range AIS data. It looked like one of the trawler trains was relocated, moving W to E, and would cross my path in about 2h about 30 nm in front of me. There were other long strings of trawlers spread out NW to SE on both my port and starboard, but they do not look like a problem for now. At 12:30 I downloaded a new long-range AIS map to confirm the train of trawlers had passed. There are no more in my path to the Solomons. Putting up the whisker pole was a sound decision. The boat has been doing a solid 5 kt on course. By dusk today, I should have reached the southern edge of Rennell, and I will need to make a decision about whether to turn W or continue N around Zona. It is interesting that PW does not show Rennell as a hazard (although it plots a course around it via the top of Zona), whereas Navionics shows Rennell at 0 feet. I woke up to an alarm at 3:30 and found the boat headed due N. The wind had shifted to 130. I adjusted the windvane and trimmed the sails to point closer to Zona, but I was still headed 5 degrees further E than I wanted. Not much more I can do. Jibing would send me into 60 Chinese trawlers. Woke up to the 5:50 alarm and a tanker was passing 15 nm S of me. It had shown up on the long-range AIS at 17:30, but not on the AIS transceiver (with a 65 nm range) at 3:30. As the tanker was doing 12 kt, it should have shown up. My only explanation is its transmitter is weak. The wind was supposed to be blowing from 197, but it was 138, putting me off course. I was sailing a course of 350 and needed 333 for Zona, but there was not much I could do but hoped the wind backed after dawn as it sometimes does. The wind is supposed to back to 102 tomorrow morning, then 130 and strong after passing Zona. The route now has me going past the smaller island of Bellona before jibing E. In fact, so far N that I\u2019d need to go around the islands E of Papua\/New Guinea. I am absolutely not doing that because it is a navigational nightmare there. Also, all of this depends on wind patterns and boat speeds that have not panned out up to now. The latitude that I would need to jibe to travel safely south of Rennell is about 13 20\u2019S, which I should reach by dusk. At that point the wind is supposed to increase 5 kt. I will probably take down the whisker pole and jibe. I will be N of the large group of trawlers immediately W of me (although there is another group further W that I would have to contend with). Alternatively, I could stick with the original plan of rounding Zona, but instead of heading E per PW, I could go SE to avoid the islands off of P\/NG. Guess I will be making that call in 12h. It is 7:15, bright and sunny, and very few clouds. Looks like a repeat of yesterday with a bit more wind. The boat is averaging 5 kt and I just saw my first gust of 20. I am going to try to leave the whisker pole up because it helps me run, but if the wind gets much over 20, I will have to take it down. Also, the flat sail created by the pole makes it more difficult to run. I might get a better angle on Zona by removing it, but then I run the risk of the sail bumping as the seas are starting to get bigger. I was going to make French toast this morning\u2026 taking advantage of the relatively calm seas, but the bread went moldy overnight. It lasted 4d, which is typical. Does not seem to matter if I refrigerate it or not. Tonight, I will finish off the last of the curry I prepared for the passage. I should try to cook again before the seas get rough. I watched the tanker drop off the AIS map at 25 nm \u2026 which explains why I didn\u2019t see it during my check last night. It is becoming a bit overcast and the batteries are not charging as fast as I need them to. At 9:15 I ran the engine for 30m and at the same time ran the watermaker, fridge, fuel pump, and IG. About one-half bowl of water came over with the fuel, which it typical for four days at sea. PW had a warning the boat would roll 10:00 for a couple of hours and that has proven to be the case. I have been studying the weather map and I should be able to leave the whisker pole up until tomorrow morning. However, I definitely don\u2019t want to have to take that rigging down in the dark if the high wind gusts come early. I will break it down before dusk and if I have to run a more northerly course to make the jib behave. At 10:30, the boat accidentally jibed. It took me a few minutes to realize the main was misshapen because the first reefing line had broken again at the grommet in the sail. The strange thing is I specifically addressed this issue before leaving Vanuatu by cutting out the frayed line and replacing it with new rope. Also, it is just not blowing that hard. I really need to find a piece of Dyneema long enough to spice a section into the reefing line. The distance sailed towards R1 in the last 24h was 1093-1043=50 nm. The total distance sailed was 7484-7375=109 nm (109\/24=4.5 kt avg.).<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Current Position: 13 49.602\u2019S 161 47.577\u2019E; Local Timezone: UTC+21; SOG: 5.1 kt COG: 330; TWS: 17 kt; TWD: 120; Distance to Waypoint (R1, Raine Passage, 265): 1043; Total Miles Sailed: 7484 nm; Engine Hours: 169 Estimate Fuel: 59+14+50 Comments: Despite a good day of sun yesterday, because of the mustard incident in the fridge and … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Captain\u2019s Log] Check-in July 9, 2025; 4:00 UTC”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aegir-ran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aegir-ran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aegir-ran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aegir-ran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aegir-ran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aegir-ran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1967\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aegir-ran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aegir-ran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aegir-ran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}