Hi all,
I am still sailing on the Campbell Plateau, this is the section of the Continental shelf to the South of New Zealand. The depth here is an average of 600m compared the deep water of 4000m coming up. I have still got 210 nm to sail until I am past the Antipodes Island and back into the clear water of the South Pacific. I am 250nm to the international Date Line where I will lose a whole day. I have in the meantime moved my clocks forward another hour so I am now 2 hours ahead of Sydney time.
Winds have been light but relatively steady around 10-15 knots from the NNW and the sea state has calmed down a lot giving me 1-2 meters of swell. I am expecting 40 knots with the sun rise though so I will be reefing the boat right down last thing tonight before I go to bed in preparation. I should then have strong winds all day tomorrow with the winds veering to the N which will give me a beam reach heading on my course, depending on the size of the swell this could be good or bad.
I have been struggling with the time going forward and my body clock has yet to catch up. I am feeling a bit more tired than normal and will try very hard to get an early night’s sleep…. .. we shall see. Also with the late sleeps I have been mostly missing a whole meal in the day, something that I can’t really afford. I will need to make an extra effort to get more carbs into me, even more so with some bad weather around the corner.
Aside from those few mundane things I have been enjoying my time at sea. I just can’t believe that I have been away at sea for 18 days now. I haven't really started missing land things yet, except maybe a double bed and hot showers.
I would have like to have more entertainment on-board as you can only read so many books however my hard drive that I had filled with videos was accidentally left in my mate’s pocket on departure day. Bugger!..... So, I have 12 movies for the whole trip that were put on my computer by a friend so I am saving them for when I really need a pick me up and escape from my life at sea. So far so good.
As I have been inside the boat keeping out of the cold winds for most of the trip I haven't seen as much wild life as I would have expected. I am sure that they are there, I am just not looking enough. There are still plenty of birds around and I did have a seal the other day pop by to take a look.
Still no ships on the B and G Radar or AIS. I doubt that I will see anyone for the next few weeks. Anyway, I feel like I am starting to ramble now as there is not much else I can say with my small existence of eat, sleep, sail, so,
Goodnight all.
Lisa
