Ascension to Fernando de Noronha Island (Brazil)…..Day 1
June 22nd to the morning of the 23rd, 2013 (Western Hemisphere) Time: Still using GMT
We got a bit of a late start yesterday morning. The boat was completely ready to go, but the previous three days on the anchor was anything but calming.
It was tough to get a good night\’s sleep and we waited the extra day to get good rest. Nikki must be a sailor as she was adamant about not leaving on a Friday too!
And as you may know, sailor\’s are superstitious. Murphy was a sailor and HE was an optimist.
John on \”Jongilanga\” left two and half hours ahead of us, we quickly caught and passed him by noon. John really sails quite under canvassed. It makes his passages very long, but he feels he gets better rest trying to never exceed 5 knots. I have a different philosophy!…
A good thing was that we got John\’s HF radio going and I think he will be able to at least hear if not transmit to our mini group out here. We have Steve and Pat on s/v \”OZ\” who left St. Helena yesterday and are heading straight toward Fernando as we are. They are 800 miles behind us. \”Jongilanga\” is too heading toward Fernando and s/v \”This Side Up\” (Mike and three crew) are heading directly for Forteleza, Brazil which will most likely be our next stop and 300 miles or so west of Fernando.
The first days sail was very comfortable, the seas haven\’t been too big, the winds steady between 15-22 knots. We\’re running as deep as we can as the wind is directly parellal to the course; so again we\’ll be jibing back and forth. We\’ve been on the port jibe since we left and we\’ll most likely jibe to the north side of the rhumb line within the next 24 hours. So far, we\’re actually SOUTH of Ascension, though quite a bit west.
The first 21.5 hours, we\’ve done 153 nm That\’s pretty good and would have projected out to around 170 nm day. No stress too! I did a \”short day\” report because it\’s more convienent for me to do them at 8 a.m. local time. Tomorrow\’s will be a full 24 hour run.
We\’re keeping two radio nets (still based in South Africa) for as long as we can and will keep our mini net going as long as possible too.
Soon, we should start hearing the \”BIG\” nets in the North Atlantic and Caribbean which will have lots of boats, net controls, relay stations and check in\’s.
The Maritime Mobile Service Net on 14300 USB (1600 UTC) for all you \”Hams\” is one of the real biggies around the world.
PLEASE NOTE: NIKKI\’S EMAIL IS NOT FORWARDING TO THE BOAT (SHORE SIDE GLITCH). YOU CAN EMAIL HER DIRECTLY AT: [email protected]
PLEASE: NO ATTACHMENTS, PHOTOS, POSTS OR GROUPS. If you CC: attachments, they will be deleted by sailmail but go to her GMAIL account.
So far, so good!
KIT,
Scott and Nikki