Out the other side

It's 3pm on Friday 17th November and the sun is shining as long silver swells roll towards us from the south west. The stronger winds during the night have eased a bit to 30 knots, and in fact were never as much as the 50-60 knots I was concerned about getting hit with. We have reefed sails but are making a pleasing 6+ knots close hauled into the waves at about 60 degrees to the wind (not great, but the best we seem to be able to do!). Occasionally one breaks over the bows and thunders back across the sprayhood, drenching the helmsman, if not tucked into the shelter. The current is being kind for once and is going our way at 1.5 knots, so we are making respectable progress in a northwesterly direction.

We seem to have lost contact with the other yachts in the radio net we briefly joined, and miss hearing the ketch "Peregrine" and solo sailor Jackie in her yacht "Shanti". She reported rigging problems that were then jury rigged in Rodriguez with the help of the father and son crew in 28' "Beguine", and then she had some further repair in Mauritius, but it doesn't sound as though it is properly fixed. I suggested dropping into Madagascar to wait out contrary winds, but I worry about her trip across to South Africa as it seems impossible to miss the storms that come through every three days.

We have just picked up another yacht on our AIS, some 7 miles astern of us. I gave them a call and determined that they have a rigging problem as well, which means that they have to stay on port tack till the weather moderates. Our own rigging creaks and groans a bit, but seems to be holding firm. But the dreaded current leak is still with us and has got stronger, giving me nightmares about the hull dissolving away. So far nothing we can do has revealed the source of the problem. Time to get the meters out (especially a new ultrasensitve one sent to me by friend George) and start tracing wiring, but to be honest I still get queasy doing that in a big sea, so it has to wait till things calm down.

Anyway, the worst of this blow seems now to be over, and we just have to get across a big area of no wind, and then blow south in a northerly gale. I anticipate arriving in Durban on the night of 20th November, a where we will wait out the next southerly buster for two days, and then try to get south to Port Elizabeth before the next one three days later!