Monday 9th January 2017
We eventually worked up the courage to venture forth with the white spinnaker up and resolved that we would only fly it at night in the absence of squalls and if there were more than 3 people on deck at the time. Once we were down to 2 people on watch we would drop the spinnaker and pole out the genoa on the spinnaker pole as it was far easier de-powering this smaller sail in a hurry.
Apart from a relative lull in the wind in the morning when it dropped off to less than 10 knots as the top of the high pressure boiled off isolated bubbles of pressure nodes, something we had noticed happening on the day’s downloaded GRIB files, and which caused our boat speed to drop off to less than 3 knots for a few hours, the wind then picked up and remained a constant 10-15 knots for the rest of the day. We had managed to drop an accumulated 110 miles off our target of 150 miles a day since the start and were looking forward to making up this deficit should the wind remain at the strength indicated by the GRIB files for the coming week.
In the afternoon Jarrod and Max unfurled their Gauteng Sea Scouts flag which they dipped in the ocean as this was apparently a tradition for the region, after which they flew it from the shroud for a photo opportunity.
We managed to take a good moon sight at twilight with the sextant and once we had identified the Greenwich Hour Angle of Aries from the Nautical Almanac also identified the three stars Aldebaran, Canopus and Formalhaut from the reference of Selected Stars as suitable for getting a fix as they were approximately 1200 apart from each other and at an altitude of approximately 400 in the sky on this particular night. We shot the stars but it proved very tricky in a rollicking swell as they kept on escaping the viewfinder on the sextant as we brought them down onto the horizon and with the moon so bright they were also quite faint. Once we had their actual altitudes and times of the sights we put the information aside until the morning to do the calculations, this being for interest’s sake only, since supper was ready and everyone was felling mighty peckish when they caught a whiff of the smoked chicken pasta on offer.