Day 51, April 26

I woke up 4 hours before dawn and things were so quiet that I was afraid that we were close to being becalmed. However, outside under the full moon things looked different. The sea was calm and apparent wind was strong and steady enough to keep us moving well. The occasional flapping of the sail was caused by momentary lulls in the wind when the boat was catching up to its speed. Nevertheless the wind was light and I marvelled how the Monitor could steer the boat so well. As far as the sail and our boat speed goes, the key was that whisker pole that kept the headsail flat and steady. Without that pole we probably would have been drifting all night.

A check of the track showed that we had been averaging 4 kts over the 10 hours since the "noon" report. The wind had shifted 30 degrees in our favor and now we were making for south of Cape Leeuwin. I tweaked the airvane to alter our heading more to the north. Conditions were mild and I went to the airvane barefoot and in my light clothes.

I was looking forward to listening to the radio in the coming day. I was now in a "news rich" environment with a choice between Radio Australia and the BBC. Yesterday I heard a good account of the Aussie ANZAC Day services and from the BBC learned of a fire at the Austal shipyard in Mobile, Alabama.

The wind picked up as dawn approached and I was able to make directly for Fremantle at 5.5 kts. The whisker pole had worked well all night and I decided to keep it up in the rising wind because I knew that I could reduce the sail area by half with the pole up.

At 0100 UTC, about 2 hours after dawn, I downloaded a fresh spot forecast and according to it I could look forward to two glorious days of good winds. However, I could expect the wind at 19 kts in only 6 hours. The whisker pole had done a brilliant job but now it was time to take it down. In these stronger winds I no longer needed the pole and I wanted the flexibility of sailing with the bare headsail. It was tricky enough taking the pole down in this lighter wind. Fortunately while I was standing next to the inner forestay frantically trying to pull in the jerking sheet so that I could free the pole the gyrations of the sail and sheet caused the pole to free itself. The safest method would be to roll the entire headsail in but that places the clew of the sail too high and beyond my reach.

After the pole operation we were still headed at 060T, between Cape Naturaliste and Fremantle and we were now under 300 miles (297) from the finish. Things were looking up.

I decided to treat myself with fresh baked bread and I produced three small loaves that rival a professional effort in lightness and crust. I started off by dissolving plenty of butter and sugar in a bowl of warm water. When solution had cooled down to blood heat I added 2 hefty tea spoons of yeast the mixed in almost an entire 1 kg bag of flour. I had just finished running the engine for one hour so I put the bowl with the dough on the engine cover and under a coat and a wool sweater. The residual heat from the engine did wonders for the rising process. This time I tried making 3 small loaves instead of 2 large ones and got much better results from the aged and somewhat flawed oven.

The engine run went well. The oil pressure alarm came on after 24 minutes and from there on it was a cycle of on and off with the alarm.

I had a great morning session with Graham. I got poor copy from him at first but then reception improved and he was able to pass on some valuable information about the winds that I can expect during the run up the coast to Fremantle. Tomorrow morning the wind will be S-SW 10-15 kts all of the way to Fremantle. On Sunday at 0600 the wind will be S-SE 10-15 kts. He will email a more detailed forecast to me. I suggested that since we had a good exchange in this session we skip the lunchtime one because by then it is well after dark on Pachuca. We agreed to skip the session and if we failed to connect tomorrow morning we would try again at the lunchtime session. This will be the first time that I can recall that I miss one of the twice daily sessions. At this point, by the way, Graham and I are over 4500 nautical miles apart.

The starboard water tank that supplies the galley finally ran dry, after 51 days. I switched on the pressure pump so that I could get tap water from the port tank. Normally pressure water is a big no-no during a passage, but we were so close to the finish that I could see no point in carting water in jugs from the hand pump in the head.

At 0800 UTC the numbers for the 24 hour sailing day were:

POS 34S55, 111E44
NND 114 nm
DMG 4644 nm
DTG 258 nm

We were entering the shallower waters of the Naturaliste Plateau and were now north of the latitude of the city of Albany.

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