Day 32, April 7

The wind held up throughout the night and we made good progress with a 20-25 kt wind of the starboard quarter and about half of the headsail rolled out. I had been wondering what it would be like to experience something that I had never noticed before, a rising sea with a falling wind. Fortunately conditions turned out to be OK. Waves would knock the boat around with the occasional one breaking on the cabin, but none of it approaching the ferocity during 30 kt winds.

At midnight we passed Isle St Paul 70 miles to the north and Isle Amsterdam 60 miles farther to the north.

Just after dawn I suited up a and went topside for a look around. I then rolled out more headsail to the second black mark (no. 2 jib size, I think) to get as much progress from the falling wind as possible.

The connection with Sailmail was excellent. As usual, the S. Africa station let me down but the Aussie one did me real good at 22 mHz. It was so good that I ordered a moving spot forecast which I downloaded 15 minutes later. A spot forecast is in text, and reports the selected conditions at a particular spot in the ocean. I select a forecast for every 3 hours over a period of 3 days starting at a specific lat and long, with the spot moving every 3 hours according to the course and speed that I have predicted. For each spot I have selected data on wind speed and direction, atmospheric pressure, and wave height, direction, and period in seconds. This is useful information but I consider it only an adjunct to Graham's weather reports on SAMMNet because there is no substitute for an experienced human being with a panoply of weather tools at his disposal interpreting the data.

I no longer download grib files. The volume of data of a minimum size grib file, 4 MB, isn't justified by the easy to read pictorial display of an area of the ocean, in my opinion, given the inconsistencies in transmission rates that I have been experiencing. The text files of spot forecasts are more efficient and adequate.

The spot forecast was better than I had expected. The wind will sag to a low point of 13.1 kts toward the end of this day, then creep up to the mid teens for the following two days. If the forecast minimum wind speed isn't too far off the mark I'll have a good chance to keep the boat moving. The seas will steadily settle down from a high of 6.6 meters during the past night to 3.5 meters 2 days out. More important than a comfortable ride, the calmer sea will enable me to keep the sail filled at lower wind speeds.

The noon numbers were good:

POS 40S12, 79E01
NND 140 nm
DMG 2934 nm
DTG 1850 nm

That noon-to-noon distance of 140 miles was achieved quite comfortably with a steady wind and a big following sea.

The forecast from Graham this afternoon gave good prospects for the next 2 days but surprised even him with an easterly wind of 10-15 kts at noon on Tuesday. If fact there will be at least 1.5 days of unfavourable winds from then to as far as he could see. There is no need to panic since that forecast is 2 days out and could change. However, I told Graham that if it came to pass I would accept it, knowing that I've had a bloody good run since reaching 40S after the iceberg incident. An easterly wind suggests a high centered to the south of me, and the best thing that I can do to help myself is to make for the east as fast as I can to try to outrun it.

In the meantime we went into the night moving well to the E at 5 kts.

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