Day 94 - Modest Progress from Northerly Wind

There was a good strong wind overnight and we made reasonable progress. In the morning the wind veered and I had to put the boat into the wind, but not too hard because with the trysail we can't point too well. In any event I did not want to go hard to weather against the rough sea, This put us on a COG of W at about 3 knots.

This trysail is a mixed blessing. I woke up in the middle of the night with the wind unexpectedly up to 27 and 28 knots, which would have put too much load on the rig had the double reefed mainsail been up.

At mid morning we began to cross the edge of the continental shelf which is wide in this part of the continent and I noticed that there were many sea birds around.

Falklands Radio is fading fast. It is a medium wave service of 530 KHz with limited range. I enjoyed it while it lasted and am sorry to see it go.

At noon we were at position 49S04, 52W23, giving us a n-n distance of 66 miles in the direction 055T. In the past 24 hours the wind had gone from calm to too strong, generating rough seas from the north. It had been a relatively slow 2 days and Cape Town was a long 3200 miles away.

Two hours later the wind hit 30 and 31 knots, making it a Force 7 Near Gale. I rolled it most of the remaining headsail and we crept along at 3 knots taking a pounding from the regular breaking waves. It is difficult to baby the rigging and sails when nature will not cooperate.

By nightfall the high winds were finished and we were entering a period of 12 hours of steadily declining winds.

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