d'Albora's Action Project: AUS 360 Blog Update
Presented by Pivotel
Afternoon all,
Well after all the drama of yesterday with water in the tanks and the broken preventer today has been very mild in comparison. Last night the winds maintained their 25-30 knot wind strength but the major difference was that the swell decreased to 3 meters. This meant that I wasn't getting rolled and knocked down as much so it almost seemed like a mellow night of sailing in the deep south. My new preventer line survived the night and by this morning the winds were staying mostly below 25 knots so I decided to go on deck and shake the 1st reef in the mainsail.
It's quite cold down here now with temperatures around 11-12 degrees but I hadn't had a massive wave over the boat for some time so I decided to not worry about putting on my foul weather gear and just go on deck to shake the reef in my base layers. Burr. Travelling with the wind isn't so bad but in order to shake the reef, you need to be sailing into the wind so I had to alter my course and come 60 degrees closer to the wind until I could get the mainsail to flap indicating that it was de-powered from the wind. I must have built up lost of energy or maybe from all the rain the bearing is the mast track has been cleaned because this was the fastest I think I have ever shaken out a reef in. It was less than 10 minutes and I was back to the full mainsail and bearing away from the wind back to course again. That must have been some kind of record for me.
I decided to keep the No 3 jib out as the apparent winds were still a touch too high but I was making a big difference to the overall speed. Now that Climate Action Now was in order and I was once again cold I went below and made a nice big bowl of hot porridge. It truly is one of my favourite breakfast's.
I also had the pleasure of doing an interview for National Geographic who has a TV series that is covering my Australia circumnavigation so I had a lovely chat with Steph this morning. It always energizes me to chat to new people out here as I really don't interact with anyone that much out here. Oh, also I had the first ship in well over a week pop up on the AIS today. They ended up passing me over 15nm away so I didn't get to see them but it is nice to know I am not the only boat out here.
Anyway, I really hope that this wind continues. I know it is due to go to the North tomorrow as a High-Pressure system fills in but hopefully, I can skirt around the bottom of it and keep some wind. At this rate, I will be home before I know it and looking forward to it.
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
