Day 37, April 12

It was yet another overcast day. We got a short burst of sunshine but I was not fooled and brought in the clothes because I could see rain on the horizon. An hour later a very light drizzle began so I put out a heavy towel that badly needed washing. If I could get the towel saturated with rain water I would wash it, otherwise it would have to wait because a dry or damp towel soaks up too much water during washing.

A piece from "Chicago" began to go through my head so I dug out the MP3 player and began to charge it through one of the laptop's USB ports. I went through my supply of flags and put the Australian and "Q" flags as well as the FSC burgee together and in easy reach for hoisting when I got close to Fremantle. How I wished that I had an Australia Boxing Kangaroo flag on board!

I was able to hear Sam very faintly at the 0630 session. The reception was not nearly good enough for my receiving weather information from him but that didn't matter because I didn't expect things to change much for a few days anyway. I read out my status report, repeating everything. Then to my "QSL?" (i.e. 'Did you copy?') I was happy to hear his reply of "QSL, QSL" which meant that he had copied my entire report. Nevertheless I composed a Sailmail message containing my latest report to be sent to Graham so that he could prepare for tomorrow's session.

I ran the engine for an hour during the afternoon and it went very well. I ran it at only 1000 rpm so as to not overpower the sail or Monitor airvane and it worked so I was able to sit back and enjoy the weak sunshine. There were no engine alarms. During the run I turned the cabin into a clothes drier by switching on the Red Dot heater and hanging the Icebreakers and a pair of track pants on a strap between the two posts, then closing the main hatch. After I shut down the engine I found the wind to be unexpectedly robust so I rolled out a bit more sail which took our speed to over 2.5 kts. The Icebreakers and pants were dry so I folded them neatly and put them in the large drawer of winter wear. I had found that I was doing just fine without the Icebreakers.

The day's spot report was as bad as the previous day's with horrible wind prospects through to as far as it could see, Monday the 15th. All that I could do was to hang in there, exploit every opportunity that came my way, and most of all hope that the computer model proved to be wrong.

I got good communication with Sam in the afternoon session via a relay. The relay repeated my information and then gave me a brief weather report that I could expect similar wind conditions of SW and SSW winds for the next 2 days. He told me that there was a high at 39S, 82E, which put it right at my heels only 6 degrees of latitude behind me. Normally that high would be further north but the morning's weather fax had shown a deep low off the Western Australia Pilbara coast that was probably the remnants of TC Victoria, and I was fairly sure that the low was affecting the movement of that high that was tormenting me. I thanked the relay for his assistance and asked him to pass my thanks on to Sam for watching over me. Fortunately the wind had strengthened and veered a bit so that I was making a satisfactory 3 kts directly to E, and I would enjoy it as long as it lasted.

Our UTC noon numbers were:

POS 39S35, 87E55
NND 46
DMG 3369
DTG 1431

Only 4 miles of that NND could be attributed to motoring. A maximum of 17 miles was due to current. That left about 25 miles due to sailing, an average of 1 knot! That's OK. I had moved more than one full degree of longitude to the east (Yes!), I had been enjoying being able to put things down without having them fly all over the place, and tonight I would watch the second episode of "The Kennedys" over a couple of beers.

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