Another grey horizon when day breaks. The genoa has been flapping around for about an hour when Mike wakes up but I was too unsure what to do about it so I just ignored it. Tightening it up (which is what Mike does immediately) would have wakened him early anyway as the electric winch is right over the stern cabin where he was sleeping.
I go to bed and fall asleep in relative calm, but am awakened a couple of hours later but the boat crashing and bouncing around extremely noisily. When I stagger, grumpily, up the stairs, Mike explains that we are now going 45 degrees to the wind which means that we get a lot more speed for the relatively gentle wind – an average of 8 knots from about 12 knots of wind – but we are going straight into the waves which have grown in height since I went to bed. How come he always seems to get the calm seas and I get the horrible ones?
With our increased speed it looks very likely that we will get in before dark tomorrow evening – I will look forward to a proper night’s sleep! However, speed has it’s price and it’s not long before the headache and sea sick feeling make their return and I lie down whingeing on the sofa. It passes after a couple of hours.
We seem to cross some sort of invisible shipping lines today as there are lots of container ships on SW/NE and NE/SW routes between South Africa and Indonesia/Malaysia. I wonder what they are carrying. One of them is definitely carrying cars according to the oracle (how does he know these things?) – something to do with the shape of the vessel.
I have now almost crossed another ocean and the second longest single passage is nearly over. The Indian Ocean has been so, SO vile, that in some ways I am less worried about going around South Africa. After all, it can’t be much worse that this was – can it? Or am I just tempting fate? I still don’t feel like a real sailor, and if I don’t do now, I guess I never will. I’m also really disappointed that I continue to feel ill on passage when the conditions are less than perfect, and that I haven’t perfected the art of sleeping on demand. Unfortunately I have perfected the art of eating my way through the contents of our food stores and must do something about this before I start to waddle!
Our position is: 20 deg 01 min S, 54 deg 25 min E
Distance so far: 16231 nautical miles
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