I just have to start off by saying that I have been doing the happy dance around the boat because finally I have following winds and am able to get some miles under my belt. I have already sailed since midnight the same amount of miles that I was doing in 24 hours down the west coast so to say I am a happy girl is an understatement, however, a little more sleep last night would have been the icing on the cake.

Well, again the conditions have been trying my patience with the light winds one second and the high winds the next. The times that the winds are high or low are never long enough for me to decide to shake a reef out but it doesn't stop me from thinking about it every time. So most of my time of late is wondering if I need to reduce sail as the boat is on a hard lean or if I should put the effort into shaking out a reef only to have to put it back in again a short time later. It is always a bit of a dilemma because you don't want to push the boat too hard and break a sail and I also don't want to just wallow and travel at 3 knots waiting for the next gust to arrive.

Yesterday you may remember that I signed off my blog in a little of a haste. When the winds had suddenly started blowing well above the sail selection and Climate Action Now was laying right over on her side with half the decks submerged in water. I really had to put my rock climbing skills to use to get safely on deck and start about shortening sail.

Things on-board have been variable to say the least. Yesterday I had rather mild conditions comparatively to the last few days however by sunset I was once again sailing in 28 knots and punching into the swell. It is quite a strange weather pattern that I have been sailing in down the west coast of Australia. Mainly because there are none of the tell tails that wind is due expect for what I can see in my weather reports from Bob and also what I can see in the grib files. Normally when you have an increase in winds you would have the barometer rise or fall more than 2 millibars in an hour and if their is a change in systems then the cloud formations would also change. For me out here their has been none of that happening.

Well, the weather simply can't seem to make up its mind at the moment on if it wants to have really strong winds or not so strong winds... It has made the last 12 hours slightly hellish. Yesterday was a lovely day the sun was shining the winds were 15-20 knots in a happy range and the swell was down but somewhere after dark it all went down the drain. I was expecting an increase in the winds and was thinking that it would likely settle around 25 knots so when the breeze started to fill in around sunset I went back on deck and put the reef back in so I was now sailing on the 1st reef. Putting reefs in on this boat along is a rather simple task and only takes me a few, however, shaking them out always take so so long. Anyway, so I was on deck and put the first reef in. Climate Action Now seemed happy just sailing along with the 1st reef and the J3 smaller headsail so I went and made some dinner.

esterday after all my bitching and moaning about the small problem with the autopilot I decided to plug everything back as it was with boat speed transducers etc and re-boot the whole system. To reboot the system I wouldn't have any instruments or autopilots to control the boat with. At the time the winds had eased to around 15 knots so I figured that for the 1-2 minutes that the boat was out of control I would not really be risking any damage. I needed to be in the nav station to hit reboot so I just took the gamble that the boat would likely round up and put itself into the hove-too position and drift sideways while I reset everything. Without dropping sails or putting the boat into hove-too myself before doing this there were very little options.

I have to admit that I am starting to go a little stir crazy with the unbelievable bad luck I seem to have had with the winds on this trip and now I am having an annoying little issue with one of my autopilots.

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.

Last night I enjoyed a nice dinner of lentil soup again and was kicking back reading a book when I got a SMS from my mum asking me to call.  Warning bells were ringing as this is not typical behaviour for mum.  Normally she would let me know why I was calling in her message so I was not looking forward to what ever bad news was coming.  I booted up my Fleet One sat phone that is provided by Pivotel and called her up. 

It has been another roller coaster of a night for me out here with the winds holding at 20 knots from the SSW and the swell is still in the 3-meter range. There wasn't a whole lot that I could do on-deck yesterday as I was still just trying to cover some ground to the west and sail out to 112 degrees east before tacking South. Bob McDavit (Metbob) has found a nice current for me to pick up and ride south out there but I have to get their first. I was still 80nm away at sunset so I was looking at all night on the port tack. This is fine and the boat was handling the waves well but unfortunately, my bunk is on the port side so it was another night of sleeping against the lee cloth rather than comfortably against the bulkhead wall.