d'Albora's Action Project: AUS 360 Blog Update
Presented by Pivotel
Blog 23.11.18
Afternoon All,
Well the conditions haven’t changed much out here over the last 24 hours. I am still crashing off the tops of waves and the wind is still blowing anywhere between 18 and 27 knots. I guess the real difference is that the wind has moved to the direct South now so I am not able to lay a direct course South but instead will be needing to tack my way down.
It was about 5 am when the winds changed enough that I was no longer making course and was now sailing towards land. From then on I have been up and down on deck as I crossed the main shipping lanes and sailed towards the coast. The seas were starting to get really messy the closer that I got to Australia so 20nm offshore at the 200m depth contour line I decided to tack back out to sea. This decision was also made because I was on a rather good collision course with a tanker that was heading north. By 8am I had completed my tack out to sea and also been over taken or passed by 8 container ships so their was little options for getting more sleep.
An interesting observation is that the winds were stronger the closer I got to the coast. I think it is because the hot air coming off the land making more clouds and the clouds were darker closer to land. At one point I was slammed with 33 knots of wind when 30 seconds earlier I was happily sailing along in 20 knots. Because of the unreliability of the wind strength I have settled on having the 1st reef in the mainsail and partially furled the j3 sail away so that it is just a bit bigger than my storm sail. This does mean that when the winds drop to 17 knots that I end up going a touch slower but a few minutes later the winds are back up to 25 knots and I am trucking along well so it is all just a bit of balance at the moment.
After my tack this morning there has again very little to occupy my time apart from throwing dead flying fish off the boat... They seem to get caught every night and at the moment I am throwing them over-board every day. Yesterday their was 3 that had unfortunately died in the cockpit and today their were two tangled in the ropes. It is pretty wet outside with the waves crashing over the deck all the time and everything is thickly coated in salt crystals so I am keeping myself below most of the time to stay dry. It has finally cooled enough for this so I have been hanging out mostly reading books.
I spoke with my sister again last night as well to see how Dad was going and it sounds like it was is very close to if he was going to make it or not and that they tried to wake him yesterday from his induced comar but had no luck so they are going to try again today. I will need to wait to hear how that went but as I have had no bad updates I can only assume he is still fighting.
Thanks to the following Sponsors for all their continued support: d’Albora Marinas, Pivotel B&G, Australian Geographic, Zhik , Park Fuels, Karver, 3M, White Bay 6 Marine Park, and Great Circle Life Raft
