| Maldives |
| Thursday, 31 March 2005 |
All fine on board Doha 2006. We are half way up the chain of the Maldive islands and across the equator into the northern hemisphere. There are 1750 miles to the finish line and that will be another week of sailing upwind to get there. We are getting used to it now after 3000 miles upwind already in the Indian Ocean.
In the Southern Ocean we could knock these miles off in just over 3 days without any problem, here it's slower and a great deal hotter, and potentially worse on the boat as we constantly charge into the swells. They are not big at all, but just the right wavelength to get us pitching and hobbyhorsing from one to the other. We have to constantly regulate our speed to ensure we get to the finish in one piece.
But overall we are making good progress at completing our voyage (23500 miles so far), and have managed to skirt around the edge of 2 tropical systems just this week. The first was Cyclone Hennie, that was centred over Mauritius and the other we passed 2 days ago at 10S. This one is slowly spinning up into a potential cyclone and trundling westwards. It's certainly going to be an influence on Daedalus, and I hope that it will help them shoot north without significant headwinds, up it's west side. We went through some of the outlying thunderstorm bands of this depression and had some impressive squalls and lightning displays.
Ahead for us are light headwinds in the North Indian Ocean until the Arabian Gulf in 1200 miles. From there we will feel the land effects of the surrounding deserts and mountains, so we can expect some calms as well as funnelling and accelerations of the breeze for the last 600 miles into Doha.
Out here it's hot and hazy at 5 degrees north and Jonny is dreaming of a holiday on the Maldives, just 100 miles to the east of us now. He was just looking at the chart, looking for that ideal hideaway.
So far we have not seen any debris in the water, perhaps because we are going up the west side of the Maldives, or perhaps because another month and a half has passed since we were last at this latitude and saw a lot of boat-breaking flotsam. We are keeping a good lookout today regardless..Yesterday night we saw the lights of a passing ship, the first since Uruguay, 22 days ago..Otherwise its just the 13 of us, our 2 hulls and the ocean.
Brian
www.maxicatdoha.com
|
|
Email this page to a friend
|
