Lat: 12 26.520′ S
Lon: 92 02.686′ E

Well, it’s Day 4 and I think we’re settling in. The weather on this passage has been some of the strangest we’ve had. Most days we’ve had a few small faint squalls, though not very frequent or very heavy. The wind can’t seem to decide whether it wants to blow 12 or 25 knots, and the seas are just now starting to become more regular even though they’re still fairly large. The last few days they’ve been fairly confused and often large, sometimes seemingly out of the middle of nowhere. Every time we’ve thought about putting the spinnaker up because we’re down to 4 knots, we wait and an hour later it’s 25 and gusting to 30 and we’re doing 6 knots again. Somehow we’ve managed to cover 130+ miles each of the last 2 days with just the jib out, which puts us on a pace to make the passage in 22 days or so.

No-work sailing in heavy trades

We’ve been in touch with two other boats (Bahati and Boomerang) via the radio twice a day, and they’re seeing similar conditions, although Bahati seems to have it a bit worse since they’re farther south and west and Boomerang actually just arrived in Madagascar after a light-wind foray up to the Chagos.

Aside from putting a rip in the jib when the wind changed to the NE, we haven’t had anything break yet. We’re both settling into books (I’m reading “The State of Africa” and Lauren is working on “Eat, Pray, Love” when she’s not doing a crossword), and unfortunately we’ve already started talking a little about food. It’s not bad yet, but it did start early. The long passages always involve afternoon conversations about favorite foods and restaurants that are a world away. We weren’t sure what we’d have for shipping traffic on this passage, but so far there’s been a fair amount compared to our long Pacific passage. Two nights ago there were about 5 ships on the AIS overnight with one massive cargo vessel getting within 3 miles or so.

When we cross shipping lanes, we’re far from alone

That’s about all the excitement I have to relay at the moment. All is well on board and ticking off the miles…