13 July 2013
I am trying to write virtually going upside down and back to front - there is a not-spoken-about aspect of long passage making, and we are in it.
We work very hard at trying to sort out sailing to occur at the best time weather wise and watch it every day. We are aware of the nasty possibility of the southern convergence zone giving us nasty winds where we are, but still there is no such thing as perfection.
Every long passage we do has days of almost impossible to live in conditions, and this is one time. The last 36 hours has seen the seas get up and the wind get up so moving about is incredibly difficult and cooking even more so. There is worse, in that as the sea has got up there has been more water over the decks and after being drowned by water coming through the hatches they are all now closed except the companionway one. So it is hot below and too wet up top to sit. A lot of lying in bunks and book reading. Far too bumpy for knitting even!
The wind has also changed direction so at crack of dawn we were falling about up top changing sails. Dave gets harnessed up when he leaves the cockpit, which he had to do when the trysail had to go up. So now we are running with our storm set of staysail and trysail as we are expecting more wind over the next 24 hours.
We are now 313 miles from Port Vila On Efate in Vanuatu and start our malaria prophylaxis tonight. Thankfully the recommended is Vibramycin which is reasonably tolerable.
16deg39minS and 174deg47E
As to what the day of the week is and the time - we have endless arguments. We do now UTC (GMT) but the date line change and time zone changes lead to lots of philosophical discussions abut leaving before you arrive etc.
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