Day 142, Year 5: Passage to Gan, Addu Atoll, Maldives
Date: Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Weather: Sunny with No Wind; Hot, Hot, Hot
Latitude: 06 degrees 48.720 minutes N
Longitude: 073 degrees 17.820 minutes E
Miles to Go: 472
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! It is 4:45 in the afternoon and we are out here still waiting for St. Pat to send some wind our way. But so far, no luck. We just turned off the engine and tried to sail and we were going a whopping 1.2 knots which would get us to Addu Atoll after the 1st of April. So the motor is back on. Mark just checked the latest GRIB files and they indicate that we will get nothing more than 5 knots over the next six days and then the wind goes to ZERO. So we are settling in with the thought that we will motor slowly all the way. This is to be expected when you are nearing the equator, but you can always wish for wind.
In addition to having very little wind, it is just plain hot out here. It is somewhere around 90 degrees F with clear skies, so that sun is relentless. I have misplaced my water thermometer and we don’t have an outside thermometer, so we are only estimating the outside temp using the inside temp of 92 degrees as a guide.
Constance had a scare this afternoon. They heard a noise and then the motor started overheating. Ed dove over the side and immediately saw that pieces of fishing net had wrapped around the prop. He was able to quickly cut it away and get going again. He doesn’t think he hit a net but just rather picked up a stray piece floating in the water.
Tonight there is a new moon which means no moonlight at all on this passage, but we have seen nothing all day-no ships, no fishing boats, no nothing-so hopefully it will continue like that through the night. We are traveling down the eastern side of the Maldives well offshore of the closest atolls, so we shouldn’t have local traffic either. So watchs shouldn’t be as intense as they were off the coast of India.
Enjoy St. Patrick’s Day and have a green beer for Windbird!
