Day 16, March 22

The banging boom woke me up at 10.30 PM. The boat was now headed almost due north and the prediction of a wind shift to the W-SW by midnight was right on the money. I suited up, went out, gybed the boat, and soon we were on a broad starboard reach headed ESE at 5 kts. At 11 PM we were 65 miles from the noon mark and if I could keep the boat moving all night I could look forward to a good NND. I was able to keep the mainsail up, sheeted hard with the traveler to the port side. This was good because it would be useful for the predicted swing of the wind to SE at 15 kt. If that SE wind came to pass I would put the boat on a starboard beat and shake out two reefs.

I got up twice during the night and adjusted the course and sails to deal with the wind that was steadily backing to the SE. At 6 AM I was awake again to the alarm for the first SAMMNet session to find the boat moving smartly to th NE at 5.5 kts. While the water heated for coffee I trimmed the boat to take her as close to the wind as I dare, gaining another 15 degrees or so. Nevertheless we had crossed latitude 43S which was outside of my planned pathway to Australia. But the 6.30 AM weather report was to indicate that I would soon be back below 43S.

Graham's weather forecast for the next 2 days was good, with winds from an arc of NE to NW, in the 15-30 kt range. This would enable me to sail on a port tack and work my way toward my goal of 43.5S. All of this would begin at midnight and for the rest of this day I could expect to deal with E to ENE winds 5-15 kts.

The latitudes just below 43S had been very satisfactory so far. I had gained the benefits of highs to the north and deep lows below 50S.

Progress overnight had been good. At 6 AM, with another 6 hours to go to noon, we had made good 100 miles from the previous noon marker. The boat was sailing very comfortably and it was time to enjoy a second tall mug of coffee.

Just before 11 AM I tacked the boat. We were well above 43S and heading NNE. The tack took us on a heading of 150T which was not ideal but would at least get us south, and I could look forward to the backing of the wind later in the day.

At the 11.10 AM session Graham presented a forecast of slightly stronger winds than before. In particular, there was no longer an expectation of a sag in the wind during the middle of this day, which was very good. Also, none of the winds for the next 48 hours were expected to exceed 25 knots, which was also very good news. On that basis I decided to leave the triple reef on the mainsail in place.

I dropped a marker precisely at noon then obtained the following information:

POS - 42S53, 043E01 (POSition of Boat)
NND - 118 nm (Noon-to-Noon Distance)
DMG - 1276 nm (Distance Made Good from start)
DTG - 3526 nm (Distance To Go to finish)

I then started the engine for a 2-hour battery charging run. It had been 3 days since the last run, the solar panels had not been able to contribute much, and the House bank was down to 12.3 V. And as before, I wanted to deal with tomorrow's strong winds without worries of the boat's electricity supply. We were already making 5 kts under sail so I ran the engine in forward gear at 1500 rpm, trying to put some load on it. The Monitor was able to continue steering with no problem. It was nice to get some heat into the cabin.

I did two Spanish lessons during the engine run (from the beginning, lessons 1 and 2, to strengthen the foundation) and when I switched off the engine I could see that the boat was over canvassed because now we were beating against an 18 kt wind. I rolled in half of the headsail which reduced the pounding and heel and agitation of the sail. That left us heading SE at 5.3 kts and I was looking forward to the backing of the wind from E to ENE by 6 PM to NNE by midnight. We were now back below 43S

At 3 PM I put up the staysail and rolled in the jib. This reduced our speed by 2 kts to 3.5 kts but I could see no point in driving the boat hard into the wind on a SE course. I would wait until the wind backed toward the north before maximizing our speed. If the wind forecast turned out to be wrong we could continue heading SE at this slower pace with no danger of winding up blow 44S.

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