Musandam has been stuck in the middle of two Southern Ocean storms, one is the low pressure that they have been attempting to stay behind for the pat few days, this has now passed in front of them and a period of sunshine and light winds gave them the opportunity to prepare for Musandam’s fist Southern Ocean blow. Throughout today the winds have been set to increase with potential gusts to 45-50 knots by late Tuesday and into Wednesday, in addition to this there will be a building sea-state with 15-20 foot seas by late Wednesday. Winds will be set to drop slightly on Thursday (25-30 knots) but still from a good westerly direction pushing them towards Cape Horn.
Here is part of the Dail report from onboard Musandam. “Since the last update we have been moving east as conditions have allowed, the wind direction has been through every direction on the compass (as forecast) and we have had fog, drizzle, sunshine, fairly flat seas, and a building swell. So it’s been all change, every time you go below something changes when you next appear on deck.
We have been waiting for the low to pass ahead of us which it now has, and then we have been waiting for the breeze to build from the north west which it is now doing. We have had full main and gennaker in the sunshine and as the local afternoon wore on the grey clouds on the north west horizon gathered, this signaled our first southern ocean ‘blow’. We think that it will last for around 36 hours and expect winds to gust to 45 may be 50 knots and for the seas to build, we have had this coming for quite some time so everyone has been getting a little extra sleep where possible – when it gets rough it may be hard! Right now we have 30 knots of wind, 2 reefs in the mainsail and the solent jib and have anything between 12 and 20 knots of boat speed depending on where we are on a wave. The swell is not yet that big, but before it went dark you could look across from one peak to another with the valley between them clear rather than the ‘wind waves’ we have had before… the Southern Ocean swell is coming. When it becomes daylight again we are expecting the picture to be more typically Southern Ocean.
The sunshine was fantastic for the 3 or 4 hours that it lasted for today, once again the wet weather gear came out to dry a bit, seems a little pointless when it’ll be damp again in just a few hours but it made us feel better – a bit of house keeping!! Loik took on the southern sea shave challenge, and seems to have come off with out too many nicks. The Hooch/Theirry watch continues to be the talkative watch, with the two of them chatting away all the way through their watch, much to the amusement of those below who hear the latest phrase that Hooch the teacher is passing on to his willing student.
We have 100 miles to go to our 1/2 way point, true to form it’ll be dark and all but the on watch will most likely be asleep, so we will probably let it slip past quietly – just safe in the knowledge we are heading back to Muscat, rather than away from it.”