November 21, 2024

 

Image By Oman Sail
Charlie and Hooch in the Southern Ocean Image By Oman Sail

After a week of long daily distances in near perfect sailing conditions the crew of Musandam are now looking ahead to tomorrow and their proposed turn to the north required to navigate them through the Cook Straits early next week. Gusts and squalls of up to 30 knots are forecast ahead  as they make their way towards the Tasman Sea. The wind is set to shift around noon on Saturday when they should be past Tasmania and around 700 miles south of Sydney, Australia.

Update from onboard today
“We are at 47d 42′ south and 141d 33′ E and the temperature in the cabin is 22.5 degrees. The temperature on deck is 17 degrees, and the overnight low was 10 degrees, how nice is that, how lucky are we.  Lots of our thermal clothes have not had an outing, simply not needed.  We know it can’t last forever, but a major memory of this trip will be just how good the weather has been for this leg underneath Australia I keep thinking that we shouldn’t keep going on about it as you’ll all be very bored of it by now, but it keeps dominating life onboard. The conversations we have and the life we lead are centered around the fact that conditions are fantastic, and we don’t have any water across the deck, not for 5 or so days now.

The night was fairly quiet (still sailing along with full main and gennaker ) and we kept pushing eastwards and just after dawn we saw an enormous Albatross. True to form it glided around the bow having a look at us, before catching sight of a camera and  landing in the sea behind us and we sailed away from it, I don’t know why they are so camera shy. The winds are generally lighter than the last few days as expected and this means less bird life, them choosing to be further south where it’s windier and they don’t have to pump their wings quite so much – good for them, but a shame for us we had grown use to their company, and they had grown used to Hoochies World War II dive bomber noises as they swooped in towards us for the ‘bombing run’
Then at 2215 GMT we took the decision to gybe south, the barometer had been raising indicating we were closing on the high pressure to our north, and it was time to get away from it and find some slightly stronger breeze.  We gybed back to the east at 0330 GMT and we are once again heading eastwards in some new breeze with a barometer that is flat…. we’ll sail this until we run low of wind again or it shifts as forecast to the SW this is some time around noon on Saturday – so 30 odd hours away from now when we should be well past Tasmania and somewhere around 700 nautical miles south of Sydney Australia. This will leave us with 900nm to sail to New Zealand
 

 

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