Day 5 (mon 23 Feb)
9pm local, 03:00UTC
pos 7deg13.13S, 096deg06.12W
heading 240 (Fatu Hiva is at 250deg)
2520miles left to go pheeeew.
water tank is 7/8
fuel hours availble is 88hrs
sea is ROUGH.
Today was Josh's birthday. He came up this morning into the saloon to be greeted by a huge batch of yellow balloons and a small pile of prezzies. He could not stop smiling. Later on Chonnie baked a chocolate cake and we painted some skewers as candles. Most of the rest of the day was spent with me being either Kung Fu Panda, Zurg, Batman or Lionking. All of this was going on during some of the roughest seas that we have had on shimmi. We had no choice really with our direction, we had to 'go with the swell and chop', which meant a 120deg broad reach heading straight for Fatu Hiva (so who's complaining?). The wind is ESE 10-15 knots, it picks up and drops off all the time and also chances direction by 10-20 degrees every half hour or so, veering from E to SW. Lots of squally weather around, no blue sky, not even clouds, just a solid dark haze all around us with scattered showers. Do my emails sound like a TV weather report? Faarken hope not. Andy is man down. Migraine and nausea. He could not eat the cake so there is no way he is faking it. The sea looks like when there is a big cold front going through the Cape peninsula with big chaotic chops on top of a solid ground swell. MIFF. I am surprised that we are not rolling around more.
We would have liked to still be heading south to the 10 degree line of lat, but its virtually impossible to do that with the current seas. We are now in the top section of the trade belt, i truly hope its not going to be like this all the way to Fatu Hiva, this was SO NOT in the brochure. One thing that concerns me is that if we cruise along the 10 degree lat (my original plan), then Fatu Hiva will be on a dead run which is a crap point of sail. So i would prefer our current course from 7degree lat which makes it more of a broad reach. But who knows how its all going to turn out? Trevor can you ask Piet Hein what their route was?
Another weird thing is how 'alone' we are. We are not sailing in a group or part of any radio net with daily scheduled 'check ins'.... We are not even seeing birds anymore.
Also no fish. Four handlines out the back: Rory's flasher with skirt in line (short), pink skirt (long), big orange skirt (very short), blue and white flying fish rapala (long). Anybody got any suggestions?
We have gone 1/6th of the distance to Fatu Hiva. All of previous days so far we used to get south, we have only been heading straight for our destination for the past 24hrs. At our current average speed of 6,5knots we have another 16 days ahead of us. But we are still maintaining good speed through this rough ocean, I am grateful for shimmi's generous 45ft length. In a shorter cat with a lower bridge deck THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN HELL. If we can get a few days of good wind and flat seas we should be able to shave it down to 14 days remaining. Sooo.... we have minimum another 2 weeks to go. Weird to think what all of you will accomplish during the next 2 weeks whilst we battle it out in the Great South Sea.
