Still in light airs with slow progress and trying to get ahead of the weather system that seems to be traveling with Musandam, as they search for the transition from the Doldrums to the north east trade winds. “we do feel like we are getting there” Charlie commented this morning. At the time of the call into Oman Sail HQ winds had dropped again to 3 knots and boat speed was 4 knots, but ever optimistic he also commented that “the wind is out there, we just need to get to it”
Current forecasts continue to state that Musandam needs to continue to try and move north and north west as what little wind they can get will be what gets them out of the this slow frustrating situation.
Charlie said this from onboard Musandam today. “Although we are still in very light airs, we have managed to move a few miles, we have had two lots of 2-3 hours where progress has been reasonable. In roughly the right direction for us – north west. We need to get north west to get clear of the light airs that are holding us. For now we are in winds from around 200 (just west of south) @ 7 knots (13 km per hour), which means we are making north west course at 10 knots.
Lots of people have asked me via email the question – does it feel like a long time? In some ways the answer is yes, and others the answer is no. The finish seems quite close, even though we still have more than 1700 nautical miles sailing to go, but each sun rise is like a new day and you take each day as it comes, there are obviously routines that help break the day up and the days slip by fairly quickly. Sometimes i find myself thinking we are on a short trip and are nearly back to base and think it odd that Muscat doesn’t suddenly appear ahead of us before nightfall, and we’d be getting ready to take the mainsail down, engine on, get dock lines ready before going out to sail again the next day. Of course that doesn’t happen, night falls and we keep sailing eating sleeping just the same as the last 65 days and nights.
These quiet conditions have meant that we all sleep a lot more deeply than when we are being thrown around in waves. For the sleeper this means deeper and longer dream sleep, some interesting ones coming out when people stumble on deck after being asleep! and for those on watch trying to wake up the sleeper, it takes more than a couple of name checks to rouse the sleeping crew man. I guess this means we are catching up a bit on our sleep, but it also goes to show how lack of sleep can be a gradual thing, you don’t feel super tired, but when your head hits the pillow – you’re gone.”