Riding the Southern Ocean horses: 52.7 knots top wind gust

Even the novelty of riding the back of a Southern Ocean low wears out
after a while, it’s amazing what you get used to, we’ve been below, hatch
closed, for the past two days pretty much eating and sleeping and riding
this mad highway averaging around 12 knots but with surfs well above 20
knots, the maximum wind we recorded so far was 52.7 knots but otherwise
has been anywhere between 33 and 48 knots. Unfortunately with such a
wide range we can’t really put any more sail up as we have to be careful
about the top end and the gusts so we are a little slower when the wind
drops, up and down all the time… I guess that’s still a force 8 to 9
that we are riding but i cant rememeber my beaufort scale…

Bad news is we have broken the Watt&Sea hydrogenerator, the bracket that
holds it always looked flimsy to me and today the whole thing just buckled
and bent and now we cant hold the propeller in the water. I will have a
better look when conditions permit but i suspect we’ll have to rely
entirely on the little diesel we have left to charge batteries, cutting
down on electricity consumption and forgetting the lovely heater that had
made such a difference in the worst moments of the upwind storm a couple
of days back.

The miles are ticking fast and now we are the same distance to finish as
the Route du Rhum i did last year, just under 3600 miles, it then took me
22 days but considering there was a lot of upwind and several windless
calms to negotiate i think we can hope for a faster passage from here to
wellington, say 18 days or less with Christmas and New Year somewhere
along the line. Fingers crossed.

Posted by: firstclass