Category: Voyages

Thoughts from the West Indian Ocean…..

22 October 2012 (Eastern Hemisphere)

Dear F&F,

We left Los Angeles, California 5 years ago. So much has happened. Yesterday \”Beach House\” was literally half way round the world from where we started.

Playing on the old riddle, \”How far can you run into the forest?\”…..\”Half way, as beyond that is toward home\”.

The sail yesterday was brilliant once we made our turn down wind at the top of the Mascarene Mountains. A bit of unusual sea surface disturbance was seen as we went near the 100 meter depths, but nothing exciting.

The skies seem to cloud up at night and get clear during the day when the sun heats everything up. No real rain in the last 24 hours and we\’ve about 525 miles to the top of Madagascar\’s Cape d\’Ambre. The weather should be pretty good from here to there and we plan on approaching the Cape from the Southeast as the winds will come more from the south up the East Coast of the island. We\’ll be very near the port of Diego Suarez, but don\’t plan on stopping there. We\’ll hopefully arrive at the Cape just after day break on our Thursday and stay very close to the shore as has been recommended to stay out of the turbulence at the top. Apparently it can be pretty exciting for about 10 miles…we shall see. After that, if we\’re feeling strong we\’ll sail the short overnight passage to Nosy Be (Big Island) where we\’ll check in at the Port of Hellvile (named after French Admiral Hell), locally known as Adonay.

As I write, we\’ve taken down the headsail and are just going on one reef in the main till the day\’s winds let us know what\’s up. We had wind from the SSE last night at 20-25 on our beam, so we were a bit over canvassed and just rolled up the genoa. We also took advantage of that and headed a bit south to begin positioning ourselves for landfall in three days.

We\’ll hear from Dave and Kathy on s/v \”Sunflower\” via email and radio this afternoon and see how there crossing of the Mascarene Plateau went.

We had a nice enough day to start to clean up, do the chores and relax. Here\’s hoping that\’s how the rest of this ride goes!..:-) Day 5 run, 197 nautical miles.

KIT, Scott and Nikki

Thoughts from the Mascarene Plateau…..

20 October 2012 (Eastern Hemisphere)

Dear F&F,

As I begin this blog, it\’s 6:45 a.m. local time and I\’ve just had to wipe the spray from the cockpit off the keyboard! It\’s a bit \”boisterous\” out here…:-) We\’ve had two reefs in the main and the staysail up since sunset last night. We were just going too fast and jumping off waves. With the wind and sea then a bit forward of the beam, it was a bit of a \”Mr. Toad\’s Wild Ride\”, hence the small sail plan.

Our southern strategy is now paying off. As the wind has risen to 18-26 knots, the seas have built and going as hard south as we were would now be very uncomfortable. It\’s still a bit wild, but much less so with the wind on the beam or a bit behind. In about 20 hours, we\’ll hit an intermediate waypoint at the Mascarene Plateau,(the big shallow area – which we will stay south of), and then head almost due west toward Cap d\’Ambre. The Cape of Amber (In English), is the northern most point of Madagascar. Our destination will be the Port of Hell-Ville (named after French Admiral Hell!). It\’s local name is Adonay. This is on the small island of Nose Be which means \”Big Island\”.

We\’ve done about 192 nm, much more to Miss Piggy\’s usual standard. Once we turn the corner, we may be able to maintain these type of runs all the way to Madagascar.

Yesterday was good sailing and notably, the current is with us and the sea state for the amount of wind we\’ve had is quite reasonable. We do get the odd 3.5 meter (11 foot) swell; they are sometimes close together.

Noisy, bumpy, but quite manageable. The boisterous weather keeps the unwanted away too! We did see one AIS target yesterday; a freighter heading towards Diego Garcia. They were on a reciprocal course about 30 miles to our south.

We\’ve been in contact with \”Sunflower\” in the afternoon\’s by HF radio; I suspect we\’ll be around 100 miles ahead of them on our late afternoon report?

Not much else to report except Nikki is making sure via celestial navigation that our GPS is really correct…..:-) Don\’t leave home without it! Fresh stores are getting low, it will be good to get to a market when we arrive.

KIT, Scott and Offwatch Celestial Girl (aka Nikki)

What a difference a day makes!…..

19 October 2012 (Eastern Hemisphere)

Dear F&F,

We\’re just completing our second day at sea and surprisingly, we\’ll do around 170+ miles. I say surprisingly, because yesterday we had at least a one knot \”counter current\”. This is a phenomenon where the counter clockwise circulation of the Southern Hemisphere meets the clockwise circulation of the Northern Hemisphere. Intuitively, you would be led to believe that this should become synergistic and complement the prevailing west bound current.

But…you\’d be only partially correct. The world spins in mysterious ways and as such, there is a counter current which flows in the opposite direction. This is true in all the world\’s major oceans. We certainly found a branch of it yesterday as we were going almost a knot faster through the water than we were \”over the ground\” per our GPS. The seas certainly acted like it as well giving us a much more uncomfortable sea state than we would have expected for the approximately 15 knots of wind we had most of yesterday. We seem to be south of the counter current now as our speed over the ground is faster than our speed through the water AND the sea state is half what it was yesterday. The ride has become downright comfortable.

Our strategy is to maintain a southwesterly heading for about another day. This will get us close to the latitude of the top of Madagascar, around the Mascarene Banks (of very shallow water – we don\’t want to go over it as it could create steep waves) and keep us further south of the HRA…just in case! There is an island group called the Angalega\’s which looks to be uninhabited, but could be a safe haven for boats trying to \”hang around\” if you know what I mean. Hence, we\’ll stay roughly 100 miles to the south; remaining a needle in a haystack!

We move our clocks today to +5 UTC (We\’re now 5 hours ahead of England, 10 hours ahead of the US East Coast and 13 ahead of the US West Coast). We\’re almost at the half way point to being around the world from Los Angeles where this voyage began.

Lots of squalls last night, but more threatening looking than anything nasty. We flew the main with one reef and full genoa all night. Nikki gets to sleep in an extra hour with the clock change, so Captain and Crew are both happy this morning with the much more comfortable conditions.

We just cracked the \”1100 miles to go\” number on our log and it\’s official, we\’ve done 173 nm the last 24 hours. Love to hear from you,

KIT, Scott and off watch Nikki

Photographs and Memories…..

18 October 2012 (Eastern Hemisphere)

Dear F&F,

We left Peros Banhos yesterday around 10:30 a.m. and had a slow but lovely sail all day. Just after mid-night (why is it always mid-night?…:-)) the wind came up a bit too strong for our sail plan and we changed the reacher out for the staysail with the full main sail. We\’ve been doing 6.5-8.5 knots and are staying as south as we can. There are a few reasons we\’re staying south. First, the prevailing wind will eventually shift a bit more south putting the wind and sea uncomfortably on our beam. Second, there is a very large shoal area at about the half way point and we want to go south of it to stay out of any big/unusual wave patterns. Next, it keeps us further south of the (HRA), military speak for \”high risk area\” which is north of 10 degrees south as we approach Madagascar. We\’ll be around 12 degrees south when we get there. Lastly, as we get closer to Madagascar, the winds will shift even further south and we want to keep them on our stern.

As to the bad guys, the first big cyclone (hurricane) of the season has blown ahead of us on our path and is likely to send anyone away from the area we\’re intending to go. \”Anais\” was the strongest \”early\” cyclone ever recorded in the West Indian Ocean at Cat 3, it had winds of 115 knots. Not something to be near! The weather forecast for the next 5 days looks good, with building trades for a day starting tonight or tomorrow, then backing off a bit. The good news is that there appears to be no repeat scenario for \”Anais\” setting up as it cleared all the instability out of this area for awhile.

The usual small squalls on the horizon, nothing out of the ordinary….

We enjoyed our time at Salomon and Peros Banhos and \”Took only photographs and memories, left only foot prints\”….. Except for the yet still amazing amount of floating plastic and \”flip flops\”, it was much like 1000 years ago.

KIT! Scott and Sleeping Nikki

Peros Banhos…..

17 October 2012 (Eastern Hemisphere)

Dear F&F,

Well, we tried to leave Salomon yesterday and we did! However, there was virtually NO wind and as we were going right by Peros Banhos Atoll, so we stopped for the night. We anchored off the old pier (which is defunct); it no longer connects to the shore. The jungle here is really thick as well. Though people lived here some 50 years ago, it doesn\’t appear that there is any infrastructure here of any kind (other than the pier). Now that it\’s low tide, we can see that there are remnants awash of it\’s pilings that do indeed extend to the shore. If there are any buildings, they have long ago become part of the jungle.

As the wind has come up over night to a much more encouraging for our departure. It\’s up to 9 knots, we\’ll be off shortly.

Our general plan will be to head more south initially, just staying to the west of the Great Chagos Bank. This will get us back down into the \”trade winds\” and then as they strengthen, we\’ll head more westerly to keep them and any building seas on our stern or quarter. The \”day trip\” from yesterday gave us a bit of re-adjustment to our sea legs as well.

We\’ll be in either radio contact or email contact with \”Sunflower\” as we head toward Madagascar and of course be sending \”the daily blog\” to all of you. Don\’t forget to look for those position reports (links at the bottom right of the home page).

So, by the time most of your read this, we\’ll be off!…

KIT, Scott and Anxious Nikki