Day 30, 5 April

I got my Sailmail service out of NSW again this morning. Once again I had trouble connecting with the S Africa station. There were still 2 or 3 hours of good propagation ahead for the S Africa station and eventually I may have connected, but I took the NSW option while I had the chance. The transmission rate was faster today, at about 560 bytes/sec, and the reception rate was much higher.

We sailed all day to the east from a NW wind. As the day progressed it got stronger and at nightfall I was facing the prospect of 30 knots until an hour before dawn when the latest cold front would pass overhead and the wind would back to the WSW at 25 kts.

The noon numbers were:

POS 39S51, 73E08
NND 121 nm
DMG 2657 nm
DTG 2127 nm

The 121 nautical miles for the 24 hours was achieved by running downwind with just the staysail. The huge (4 meters) following sea had been a big help, and the current contributed about 0.7 kt.

There was at least one more day of good wind ahead and I was looking forward to crossing the milestone of 2000 miles from Fremantle. Although the wind would moderate tomorrow, the spot forecast predicted a rising sea to 6.5 meters, so I knew that we were in for another pounding. I planned to keep on running downwind with the staysail through it all because if we had survived 7.5 meter seas we would survive tomorrow's.

The Rutland wind charger was in its element and had delivered a stellar performance. For the last 24 hours it had produced between 4 and 8 amps. and had kept the boat's electricity use in surplus much of the time. When the wind approached 30 kts it would overheat and shut down until it cooled down but in these 25 kt winds it was at its best. Going into the night the house bank was at 12.8V.

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