Christmas at Sea

Christmas Day 2016, we are a long way from home, and have a long way to go. Usually in my voyages, I haven’t gotten too lonely. But today I did.

I’m sure it was exacerbated by the big depression that is forecast to develop ahead of us. The timing of this one is lucky for us, since we can slow down, let its early development sweep over us, and when it intensifies into a serious Southern Ocean storm, it will be moving away from us to the east

Yet by the fact of our slowing, essentially stopping (we were down to 3-4 knots at one point), we were making no progress, and that was discouraging, and added to the loneliness.

We received many holiday emails from friends and family, and I had several Skype video conversations with friends and family, and all of that, including the encouragement and good wishes from our sitesALIVE participants around the world, has helped immensely. So thank you all for that – you have buoyed my spirits!

And now, the early part of the storm has passed our position, we will shortly think about rolling out the staysail , in addition to 3 reefs in the mainsail, and get going again, wanting to hang on to the tail end of the depression and have it drag us past New Zealand in several days time.

That’s the plan. We’ll be updating our weather files more regularly than usual to assess whether we have planned this correctly.

Position
49° 51’S x 147° 10’E
Course
117° True
Speed
5.6 knots
Log
14,440 nm
True Wind Speed
14 knots
True Wind Direction
260°
Sails (click for sail diagrams)
Mainsail (3 reefs)
Air temperature
57°F / 13.8°C
Sea temperature
54°F / 12.2°C