Tuesday 22 October 2013
30 miles from Eden, NSW
In preparing for tonight’s Ships Log I asked the guys, “what’s been the highlight today?” … vainly thinking, maybe my beef schnitzel and vegetable ensemble for dinner …
“The weather !!” came the unanimous response. Meaning, the improvement in the weather during today after last night’s rather trying experience.
In looking at the weather map for last night there seemed to be this lonely “high wind” spot on the NSW coast around Jervis Bay, and it was the very place we happened to be – for hours. After starting out from the north, the bad stuff came out of the south, causing us to tack back and forth till by sunrise we were finally rounding Cape Perpendicular (well named by the way) and able to lay a course roughly in the direction we wanted to go.
The weather actually started to go bad soon after I’d sent last night’s Ships Log, and had written something like … “at least the weather’s been fine for everyone’s tummy…” I’ll have to stop saying things like that.
By way of a health check-up and for the benefit of family at home … everyone’s fine on board. We’re currently preparing for our second night at sea. It’s 10:00pm, Tony is going to bed, (after kindly doing the dishes) John is relaxing on watch in the cockpit, along with David and I’m eating into a packet of Mars Bars out of a sense of duty because they got heated up yesterday and might be going off.
Our course currently has us heading straight into Eden, probably around 3:00am tomorrow. We’d like to be able to press on around Gabo Island, Wilsons Prom and home, but a reading and re-reading of the Bass Strait weather forecast for the next few days has caused us to decide on sitting this one out. Predicted west and southwest winds of up to 45kts, seas of 3 metres and swells of up to 5 metres do not sound like much fun and Eden is just the place to shelter.
If it actually ends up blowing 20kts from the east I’ll be very unhappy, but the weather bureau has generally been pretty good with their predictions and so we’ll take what they say as fact.
Smooth seas, fair breeze and Eden for breakfast
Rob Latimer
a gale warning here this morning. Hope this clears soon and you have a great sail round the corner.
Sally Spencer commented on Medical Sailing Ministries:
a gale warning here this morning. Hope this clears soon and you have a great sail round the corner.