430 miles south east of the Seychelles with the Equator 440 miles ahead, trimaran Musandam making slow progress north is currently situated at 07° 03.9435 S / 062° 05.9227 E. See latest position on the Race Tracker.
2700 miles nautical miles ahead of 80 day virtual pace boat, over 20,000 nautical miles covered since the start (8th January 2009), 1888 miles distance to finish. See full boat date on the Race Dashboard.
Hard work over night as they crew pulled out Musandam’s entire sail wardrobe to try and keep moving northwards, at times all 5 of them on deck in torrential rain “the rain was incredible, it was school geography lesson that came alive, water being sucked up from the surface of the ocean and then the rain that that process creates – but you can never imagine how much rain that could be and it’s hard to describe how much water was in the downpours, what an amazing natural phenomena” comment Charlie this morning. On the upside life was fairly pleasant onboard despite the lack of wind, the good thing was that they were moving and continue to do so and are hunting the wind down rather than waiting for it to find them.
There is a high pressure system situated to Musandam’s east and the current forecast predicts scattered clouds and showers over the next two days, the flow is due to clock during today though north west to north to north east. Winds still predicted to be light through friday and more breeze expected by Saturday
Charlie fills us in on life from onboard Musandam today “Sunrise here in the Indian Ocean, to starboard (right hand side) we have the sun coming up quickly and I am sure we’re in for a hot one today, out to our port side (left hand side) a fairly full moon still high in the sky, very nice conditions though upwind in light airs (8 knots). Last night we had some incredible cloud fun, getting stuck under a couple of massive ones with torrential rains and huge shifts and increases and decreased in wind strength. Big blasts of warm and then cold air, full on doldrums conditions. In one 3 hour period we fairly constantly changed sails, Genoa, Solent, Bare Head, Solent, Genoa, then ended up with 1 reef. All this with torrential rains, Hooch was asleep in the bunk below the cockpit floor, and had to listen to the winches turning almost constantly, going through the gears on the winch – we have 3 per winch, plus the ability to engage an over drive to give a total of 6 different gear ratios. That’s what the doldrums is all about, I am sure most people think of periods of no wind just sails flapping and going nowhere with nothing to do, but there is more work to do during the light airs than during the heavy airs just to keep the boat moving.
During the day yesterday our progress was very slow and we set the fishing line. It’s not really a normal thing to do on a record attempt, but our speed was so slow that (like the time off New Zealand) it seems crazy not to give it a go – especially as we were just by a shallow bank where we knew fish would gather. Sure enough after a while the line went tight and Mohsin was able to land a sizable fish – not quite as big as our Kiwi catch, but plenty big enough for everyone to have a good feed and second helpings. Our Kiwi catch was cut up in to steaks, where as this fish was prepared by Mohsin who efficiently (with an all too blunt knife!) gutted and filleted the fish making some good steaks for Loik to cook. It was a welcome addition to our food program today, and it was a welcome distraction to the Doldrums. Mohsin was a bit worried he might become more well known for being a fisherman than a sailor, but hopefully everyone understands how unusual it was to be fishing!!!
Generally our stores are holding up well, our pile of empty grey food bags is quite big now, we have converted their contents in to energy and white garbage bags which we store up forward for disposal on land. We only have one 5 day bag left in the back of the boat and two under the generator floor – a very graphic reminder how long we have been going. Remember no stops, no resupply, if it wasn’t onboard when we left we have done without it. We have learned a lot about what we would take next time and what we would leave behind. It’s one of the benefits of the Oman Sail project that the lessons we learn will help make future trips better, faster, more efficient, and easier to plan. Where as traditional sailing programs gather people together for the period of the challenge, afterwards everyone moves on to different projects, never really capitalizing on the collective knowledge. Keeping this line of development open over a period of years will make it possible to make well informed decisions about what works, and what doesn’t.
Now that we are back in warmer climates, the battery charging is more efficient and the watermaker makes water maybe twice the rate than in the colder waters of the Southern Ocean – this is great as it meant we could draw off a couple of buckets of fresh water to wash with, a real luxury and in the last hour of darkness I managed a bucket bath in the cockpit. It’s incredible how fresh the soap smells after so long relying on wet wipes. I think when we hit land we are going to have a sensory overload, with the sights, noises and smells of land hitting us hard. We will be ready for it and also to see some new faces other than those 4 we have been looking at onboard for the last 2 months.”