It’s a slow night and we motor sail for a while. We need to charge the batteries anyway as we have no generator so we might as well get some speed out of the engines while they are on. The winds are all over the place, coming unexpectedly from the north when they should be from the south or east. None of the predictions are correct, so it’s just like being at home. I actually wake up cold in the night and turn the fan off. For the first time, the boat feels clammy as we have not been able to run the air conditioning to dry it out.
The morning starts with rain clouds and a brilliant rainbow, the second one in two days, but very quickly the clouds disappear and a clear blue sky appears, the first for a few days. It also means that it is hotter again and the desire to sit in the cockpit in the breeze is tempting although the reality of sitting on salty cushions puts me off.
The boat is such a mess, what with the bird shit and salt. Although the cockpit floor glitters prettily like snow does when the sun shines on it, it feels disgusting underfoot and the flecks of salt on the cockpit cushions makes them look though someone with a severe dandruff problem has been sitting there, scratching. Lovely!
I make us a cooked breakfast of bacon, fried eggs and fried tomatoes to use up more of the ‘high risk’ foodstuffs that we are not allowed to bring into Australia.
We are surprised that Ocean Jasper and Crazy Horse have not overtaken us during the night then hear on the radio that they have been racing each other and decided not to use their engines when the wind failed last night and therefore were down to painfully slow speeds of 2 or 3 knots. I doubt that they realised their boats could go so slowly! It must have been a first for them both.
Mike has a sleep in the morning and I have one in the afternoon. We see each other at lunchtime as we eat – surprise, surprise – chicken! By late afternoon the wind and sea are so calm that I decide to colour my hair. If I had done it over the last few days the dye would have been everywhere.
From time to time we hear the officials on the Australian Customs plane calling the World Arc boats as they are spotted, but no one calls us today – we are still well ahead of everyone else.
We have another beautiful sunset and see squalls again on the horizon.
Just after dark a passing squall brings winds of 20 to 25 knots and Mike decides we need to reef in the main sail. We get the reefs in and it makes no difference so we take it all the way down. On its way down it gets caught and I have to pull it up again before bringing once more back into place. Huge lumpy seas come out of nowhere, and from being beautifully calm at 6 pm, by 8 pm the boat is about as uncomfortable as it can get and I am swallowing sea sickness tablets and eyeing up the bucket to make sure it is within vomiting distance. Great.
Another huge waves breaks over the cockpit. Wonderful. Just what we need. More salt! By the time we get to Mackay I won’t be able to rinse it off – it will need a shovel!!!
We break the normal pattern of watches. I take the first one – five hours from 8 pm until 1 am – and Mike will do from there until morning. This is because some time in the early hours we will start to make our rather complex way through the passages in the Great Barrier Reef
Our position is: 19 deg 43 min S, 150 deg 48 min E
Distance so far: 10309 nautical miles
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