While you were watching election returns, the weather gods were serving us up a smorgasbord of conditions.
Since the last writing, we have had calm winds, 30 knot winds, calm seas, 3 to 4 meter seas, squalls with torrential rain, lightning, warm sunny periods, and just about everything in between. While variety may be the spice of life, this variety at sea means lots of exercise and not much sleep for the crew. We have set sails, killed the engine, reefed sails, struck sails, started the engine, shaken out reefs, etc. constantly since last night. All this while trying to get an hour or so of sleep and a meal down here and there. No complaints, just part of the game, and I never did care much for election returns anyway. The lightning show was pretty cool. The flashes were all contained in the cloud cells and I heard no thunder. Must be the Aussie variety.
As of this afternoon things started to stabilize as we sailed closer to a high situated in the South Tasman Sea. We are now close reaching into 12-15 knot south-southeast winds and averaging 8 knots towards our waypoint at the entry of Port Jackson (Sydney). We haven’t had to do any sail handling for at least two hours. Whew!
It has been too rough, and we’ve been too busy to fish.
At around 2 PM this afternoon, we reached our half way point, so we have less than 550 miles to go to Sydney. Our noon to noon run put us 171 miles closer to the mark, and our present Lat/Lon is 28 00 south and 158 51 east. At last check, “Bossanova” was motor sailing a lower and more comfortable course in light winds about 35 miles behind us. David doesn’t want us to sail into Sydney Harbor first, so let’s just see what he’s got up his sleeve.