Lat: 9 21.597′ S
Lon: 30 50.839′ W
The water has warmed up about 30 degrees since we’ve left Simon’s Town (from mid-fifties to mid-eighties), and combined with the clear, sunny tropical skies and light winds, it’s made for some warm, lethargic days. It’s been difficult to use part of the mainsail without blanketing the spinnaker, so our mileage has been hovering around 100 nm each day (106, 104, 115 the last 3 days), which is definitely on the slow side for us in terms of ocean passages. If we weren’t benefitting from a helpful current, we’d probably be below 100 nm several days. It’s been so calm that Lauren gave me my first haircut at sea and I never once heard “Ooops”.
Laptop-based movie watching is a mainstay for the modern cruiser
Yesterday we got a little break from the heat when the squalls returned. Several passed over us, bringing their typical enhanced winds, followed by rain and then very light winds. We crossed most of the Indian Ocean with only two sail changes (double-reefed main up and then back down 24 hours later), but yesterday, with all the wind changes, we made the first sail change early in the morning and the last one at midnight, with several in between.
The AIS seems to be flaking out again, but we’ve only seen two ships since we cleared the traffic off of the Namibia coast. A couple of days ago one passed across our bow, and hailed us on the VHF (sailing yacht, sailing yacht, …). It turns out the captain was just curious about us and wanted to have a friendly chat. They were a cargo ship loaded with iron ore sailing from Brazil to Japan with 21 Pilipino crew.
Lots of iron ore headed to Japan
At the moment, we’re motoring with clear morning skies, very little wind, and only about 250 nm to go to Recife. So far, the South Atlantic has been far and away the most gentle and docile long stretch of sailing that we’ve ever had. Like Bob on Boomerang said on the radio the other day, “It’s another Groundhog Day here”. I’m sure we’ll look back on the South Atlantic fondly, but after so many days of the same weather, with light winds and low speeds, it will be nice to make landfall or reach the North Atlantic NE trades and have a bit of a change.