Oman Sail’s Musandam Has Less Than 900 Miles To Finish

Musandam Crew (Photo Courtesy Of Oman Sail)

900 miles west of India and 950 miles to the finish in Muscat, 1500 miles ahead of the virtual 80 day pace boat

A tired crew who for a longtime anticipated that they would be in Muscat by this stage have one more obstacle – a high pressure system 200 off the coast of Oman

I must say this is an update I thought at one stage I would never write and that day 71’s food bag was one that we would unpack in the storage container. For a good portion of this trip we have been on schedule for a 70 day circumnavigation. The Doldrums have decided that would not be the case. We are now approximately 5 days ahead of the 80 day pace boat which should indicate a 75 day circumnavigation, however one final fence to jump – an area of high pressure centered 200 nautical miles off the Oman coast will have to be tackled. We must sail around it’s western side before turning north, into the oman coast somewhere around Sharbatat or Mukhsay and heading north east towards Ras Al Hadd – the final corner of our trip, 100 nautical miles from the finish in Muscat. These final miles will be familiar miles as it’s the same as our delivery last autumn, the winds should be quite different however with some moderate downwind conditions leading us to suspect a quick finish to this last 2 weeks of slow going.

More thunderstorms yesterday during the day, before a relatively quiet night. The thunderstorms were a nasty reminder of our time in the doldrums – with a period where we were stuck in 5-6 knots of wind, but from every direction – the wind swirling around, followed by that wind being crushed by another torrential rain downpour and finally the true gradient winds returning from the north east and putting us on our way again. Although overnight we had a few random clouds we were never threatened with the lightening storms or ‘odd winds’

Everyone is a little tired now, the excitement of being close to arriving not injecting adrenalin, but still the brain knows we are nearly at the end. We can see it on the chart, mapped out in days ahead of us, every time we make it to a waypoint on time we are grateful that our current predictions are correct.

Hoochie and I had a ‘life on land’ conversation this morning, it’s going to be strange having a load of options laid out in front of us, driving a car, coming to a junction and being able to turn left or right, go to a shop and buy anything or nothing, go to a restaurant and choose a variety of foods from a menu. We couldn’t decide if we are going to be overawed by it, or slip right back into the consuming consumers we were before. We will just have to see…..”