| Looking to Mauritius |
| Saturday, 19 March 2005 |
A slow morning in the Southern Ocean here on Doha 2006. The sun is shining through the thick fog as we trickle along at 7 knots. Karine saw a ‘fogbow’ behind us. We are still in the middle of the ridge of light winds extending down from Africa, but the weather models are predicting a break through of northerly winds by this afternoon, that will send us on the way again at high speeds.
We took the opportunity to drop the mainsail onto the boom to check all the batten cars and the headboard, the first time the main has been down since the start and it’s all in good shape. Previously Andy has been up on a halyard for inspections but as we were only doing 2 knots it was no great loss to drop the main for 5 minutes.
There are no albatross flying today, they must have left to go somewhere windier or are just sitting on the surface, out of sight. Saw the blow of a whale earlier, but could not see the whale itself. It's actually the first big whale we have sighted since the start, although we have seen pilot whales and dolphins in the Indian Ocean on the way south. Water temperature is up to 8.6 degrees after being 5.6 degrees last night, so the iceberg risk is down for the present.
All good on board, we are looking to Mauritius as our next major milestone on the voyage back to Doha. It’s 2037 miles away now, and we have so far traveled 18,900 miles. Once we get our wind this afternoon we have to cross from one side of this high-pressure system to the other side, almost through it's centre. Basically it is 1000 miles to the centre, and a 1000 miles out to its northern edge, which is close to Mauritius. After that we are in the more fluky winds of the tropical South Indian Ocean, so anything could happen, and probably will...
Cheers,
Brian
www.maxicatdoha.com
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