Position 1800 UTC - 14th June 2020
- 07 degrees, 15 minutes South
- 126 degrees, 11 minutes West
Sailing wing on wing with wind at 170 degrees apparent
Sea State: 2.5m swell (sometimes more) with wind chop
Wind: 19 knots from the East
Speed over the ground: 7.5 knots
Course over the ground: 240 degrees
Distance sailed towards north Marquesas in 24 hours 164
Well, other than our fantastic Askari, the stars are the thing that are just blowing our minds on this trip - we had another clear night. This morning I said to Andrew 'I nearly woke you from your off watch as the stars looked like something from a disney film' - I had mars, saturn and jupiter all in full glow. He hadn't seen mars but had also been using our star finder app during his nightwatch. You could actually see every constellation shown. I don't think I'll ever forget the last two nights out here with these star shows for entertainment.
The night was actually a bit unsettled as the wind dropped down as low as 10 knots and the sails were not happy at all. It's really stressful, especially as they are our new sails and seeing them crash around makes us both so sad. We thought long and hard about keeping the old ones on for this part of the trip but getting a damaged sail down or it getting jammed out here, both of which could have happened with the old ones, would have been far worse. This morning we had an early morning rain shower and then the wind filled in at 20 knots from the east and then this afternoon we have had up to 27 knots. So our days run should be much better today than the measly 164 miles to 1800UTC today.
As I write this blog update we have 5 AIS targets about 10 miles south of us - four of which are shown as helicopters. We are guessing this is part of a pretty serious tuna fishing operation. We are therefore trying to keep well clear of them and are running due west until we are clear of them. They are not moving so hopefully it won't be long but it really is quite unnerving to see helicopters on the screen out here. (Update - we believe they are marking longlines that appear over 30 miles long and counting- the mmsi numbers associated with them are not in a format we recognise and they don't answer the radio - hmmm sounds all a bit dodgy to me).
We continue to stay in touch with other yachts out here that are behind us - Zouterik, Tintamarre and Clio - everyone is reporting good sailing, food and fishing at the moment. Yep that's what gets talked about!
All is well here speeding on west at 8-9 knots now.
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