From: OmanTri
To: update
Subject: Friday 30 Jan
Date: 30/01/2009 04:03:55


We are at 47d42′ south and 141d33′ E and the tempreture in the cabin is
22.5 degrees, the tempreture on deck is 17 degrees, and the overnight low
was 10 degress – how nice is that – how lucky are we. Lots of our thermal
clothes have not had an outing – simply not needed. We know it can’t last
forever, but a major memory of this trip will be just how good the weather
has been for this leg underneath Australia I keep thinking that we shouldn’t
keep going on about it – as you’ll all be very bored of it by now – but it
keeps dominating life onboard – the conversations we have and the life we
lead are centered around the fact that conditions are fantastic, and we
don’t have any water across the deck – not for 5 or so days now.

Enough about the weather…..

We saw a whale last evening ( well Thierry did) the rest of us saw an oily
scum on the surface of the wave that seemed to be the whale’s exhale. I
guess we were lucky not to hit it- but the daggerboard and rudders humm
quite a bit and any whale that is awake would hear us coming from miles
away and dive down a bit ( at least we hope) We did spend a good few hours
before sunset looking out to sea to see if we could see any other wild
life – but nothing was sighted.

The night was fairly quiet ( still sailing along with full main and
gennaker ) and we kept pushing eastwards, and just after dawn we saw an
enourmous Albertross -true to form it glided around the bow having a look at
us, before catching sight of a camera and landing in the sea behind us and
we sailed away from it – I don’t know why they are so camera shy. The winds
are generally lighter than the last few days as expected and this means less
bird life – them choosing to be further south where it’s windier and they
don’t have to pump their wings quite so much – good for them, but a shame
for us – we had grown use to their company, and they had grown used to
Hoochies WW2 diverbomber noises as they swooped in towards us for the
‘bombing run’

Then at 2215GMT we took the decision to gybe south – the barometer had been
raising indicating we were closing on the high pressure to our north, and it
was time to get away from it and find some slightly stronger breeze. We
gybed back to the east at 0330gmt and we are once again heading eastwards in
some new breeze with a barometer that is flat…. we’ll sail this until we
run low of wind again or it shifts as forecast to the SW this is some time
around Noon on Saturday – so 30 odd hours away from now when we should be
well past Tasmania and somewhere around 700nm South of Sydney Australia.
This will leave us with 900nm to sail to New Zealand

The new food bag was opened as usual just after midnight today, and although
it was small by comparison to yesterday ( top up of coffee, sugar, jam etc)
Hoochie has declared it a good day for food with Chichken Paella, and
Goulash as our main courses, and vanilla desert for pudding – def. a good
food day. It seems that yesterdays rice pudding is an aquired taste, but
with a generous portion of strawberry jam all thoughts of school dinners are
banished, and it’s not too bad – not our favourite ( mouse choc – mixing
method now perfected, still the winner ) but a nice hot desert for the
‘freezeing wastes of the southern seas’, or rather it will when we get to
the freezing wastes.

The other most popular food item is the biltong – dried beef, we have quite
a bit with us, and it’s a killer savour snack. some bits need more bite than
others, but it’s great you can chop it finely and add it to main courses or
simply sit on deck and pass the bag around. Is it more popular than the
wine gumms or starmix ? – i’ll leave you to guess the answer to that……