Day 155, Year 5: Passage to Chagos, Day 2
Date: Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Weather: Partly Sunny Day; Winds W 2-6 Knots
Latitude: 02 degrees 04.335 minutes S
Longitude: 072 degrees 45.735 minutes E
Miles to Go: 201
Poco Andantes-slower than walking. That is the way we are currently traveling to Chagos, but the seas are calm and it is very peaceful. We sometimes get 2-3 knots of wind, so we motor. Then we get 4-6 knots of wind and we snail, I mean sail. We have had a full knot of current against us since leaving Gan Atoll so our speed over ground when sailing averages about 1.8 knots; when motoring at 1500 RPM’s we go a whopping 3 knots. We’ve only traveled 66 miles since this time yesterday, so the new Estimated Time of Arrival is sometime on Friday, April 2 unless something changes in the weather.
We had hitchhikers last night. About five Sooty Terns decided that they wanted a free ride and nothing we could do would dissuade them. They perched on the bow pulpit, on the solar panels, and on the grill always leaving their happy little droppings behind them. These are rather large birds and when we tried to shoo them away, they would fly at us and squawk mightily. I love birds, but I have learned not to love them on my boat. The clean-up is no fun at all. We also had a beautiful full moon last night and even though it was very cloudy, the moon light shone through and lit the way for us. My big accomplishment for the day was unwrapping each of seventy-five tomatoes I have in a basket to check ripening progress. The twenty-eight tomatoes on the bottom layer were green in Cochin and are now yellow. The middle and top layers were just beginning to ripen when we left Cochin and they are still not fully ripe. I lost only six that were rotten, so hopefully wrapping each tomato in newspaper is working Mark and I also worked on route planning figuring out how many miles from one destination to another. We are writing a summary of miles to date and miles to go and will put that in a log later in the week when it is complete.
Here’s hoping that our little bit of wind lasts through the night and that the east setting current diminishes soon. In the meantime, we will enjoy the peace and quiet.
