This afternoon I received another call from Alex via the fantastic Starlink satellite internet connection – so much better than Iridium phone calls!
So I have a bit more news to share, although I might not have the order exactly right as I was jotting things down while excitedly talking to a sleep deprived Alex!
Yesterday, although it was breezy, was relatively enjoyable. Cheryl reports seeing lots of Albatrosses.
Last night they sailed their course with a smidge of genoa and main through winds in the mid 20’s, but the wind direction shifted and they couldn’t maintain their course so close to the wind and they started running south with the wind behind.
In the morning, in 30kts, gusting 40kts, Alex and Cheryl furled the genoa and hoisted the storm jib (it took an hour to do this, being safety conscious and moving carefully around with short tethers clipped on at all times!). During this process one of the jib sheets (rope) got loose at one end and flew around the deck, wrapping around things, and had to be retrieved.
By 11am Alex decided to put the boat in a “hove to” position which ideally brings the boat to a stop. This was slow down so that they didn’t run into the back of the trough that had passed them and to keep to the weather routing plan from MetBob. If you look at the tracker (“Where’s Rusalka”) you’ll see they suddenly started moving slowly to the NW – this was the result of imperfect balancing of the boat when hove to (but who am I to judge?!). A little later Alex adjusted the balance so that now the boat was properly hove to and just drifting slowly to the SW, side-on to the wind.
Just as an aside, Alex has been reporting in daily on HF radio to Peter Mott of Passage Guardian (https://passageguardian.nz) and when Rusalka suddenly turned to the NW it set off an alarm that triggered Peter to contact Alex to see if all was alright. It’s good to have someone other than me looking out for him!
Winds are now easing back to the low 20’s and Alex is ready to take down the storm jib (another bit of wet work on the foredeck!) and start moving again. His current routing advice is to head to 46oS and then go directly toward Foveaux Strait in WNW winds around 20kt. At this point it looks like they are likely to arrive sometime on Sunday, but I’ll keep you posted.
Thank you to Cheryl for sending me some fantastic photos!
