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We\’re Getting Close…..

23 October 2012 (Eastern Hemisphere)

Dear F&F,

Last night was a beautiful sail. The seas at only 2 meters, long and pretty smooth. The wind has been around 17-20 knots just aft the port beam, but we\’re able to carry our genoa winged out to weather on the pole. We\’re starting to see lots of birds (getting close to land). I\’ve never seen more flying fish than on this trip. My first job of the day is to remove them from the deck. Yesterday, I had 10 to throw back.

We just moved our clocks again to +4 on UTC (Greenwich); were getting closer in longitude to the Western European and US World\’s.

Interestingly, I\’ve been able to listen to the Presidential Debates on the BBC!

We\’ve 360 miles from the \”top\” of Madagascar, another 100 from there to where we\’ll check in at Nose Be (Big Island). The weather looks to be good and maybe getting a bit lighter from here to Madagascar. We should arrive on our Thursday morning and hopefully going around the top won\’t be too bumpy. The \”top\” has a notorious reputation for standing waves and big currents. The strategy for others who\’ve gone before us is to stay very close to the beach and get around quickly. The other side (West side), is supposed to be nice and calm. We shall see?!….

Short blog today, not much to report other than the back to back 197 mile days. Day 6 run – 197 miles.

KIT, Scott and Sleeping Celestial Navagatrix-Nikki

We\’re Getting Close…..

23 October 2012 (Eastern Hemisphere)

Dear F&F,

Last night was a beautiful sail. The seas at only 2 meters, long and pretty smooth. The wind has been around 17-20 knots just aft the port beam, but we\’re able to carry our genoa winged out to weather on the pole. We\’re starting to see lots of birds (getting close to land). I\’ve never seen more flying fish than on this trip. My first job of the day is to remove them from the deck. Yesterday, I had 10 to throw back.

We just moved our clocks again to +4 on UTC (Greenwich); were getting closer in longitude to the Western European and US World\’s.

Interestingly, I\’ve been able to listen to the Presidential Debates on the BBC!

We\’ve 360 miles from the \”top\” of Madagascar, another 100 from there to where we\’ll check in at Nose Be (Big Island). The weather looks to be good and maybe getting a bit lighter from here to Madagascar. We should arrive on our Thursday morning and hopefully going around the top won\’t be too bumpy. The \”top\” has a notorious reputation for standing waves and big currents. The strategy for others who\’ve gone before us is to stay very close to the beach and get around quickly. The other side (West side), is supposed to be nice and calm. We shall see?!….

Short blog today, not much to report other than the back to back 197 mile days. Day 6 run – 197 miles.

KIT, Scott and Sleeping Celestial Navagatrix-Nikki

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)