Strong Winds!

The satellite picture showed a line of cloud ahead, and sure enough we reached it on the 28th of September and the wind picked up to mid twenties and then more. We saw a group of four fishing boats hurrying back the 170 miles to Indonesia, disappearing between the waves, and then briefly popping up on the crests.

That night when I came on watch it was gusting thirty, and we still had all sail set. I considered reefing while I had Mark there on watch, but we were going so well making 8-9 knots and there was no indication that it would get worse, so I foolishly held on to the mainsail. A couple of hours later it was clear that I should have stuck to the old sea dog's adage and reefed when I first thought of it as the wind was now 40-47 knots and we were overpressed with a top speed recorded of 12.9 knots. Justin and Mark tumbled out of bed on my call (they were ready to go as they could feel it all going wrong) and we dumped sail in big breaking seas. Once the mainsail was off, the boat was much more stable with the Genoa poled out to port and the staysail to starboard, running down wind towards Christmas Island. Amazingly the current at this point was 3.8-4 knots going roughly in our direction, adding 90 miles a day to the ground we covered.

The change in weather brought thunderstorms and rain, and bigger seas, with the long 3m swell from the south now added to by equal-sized wind-waves from the south east. Now on the 30th of September the wind has eased back to the mid twenties, and we are making good progress towards Flying Fish Cove on Christmas Island, which I expect to reach about midnight tonight. Occasional waves break over the deck and give us a wetting in the cockpit.

I have been in email contact with Dietmar on his beautiful blue Swan 55, Cesarina, who we met in Niue. They are in the World ARC and are now in Cocos and Keeling Islands. As planned we have now caught up with the ARC fleet, and are running a week behind them. They had a rough sail from Christmas Island in the Force 9 we experienced, and it sounds as though there is a lot of anxiety in the fleet about more of the same on the 2,350 mile leg to Mauritius. We will see what we get, and hope for the best. I feel confident in the boat, but it can be very wearing on the crew!