Be The Jam

Position: Indian Ocean

S 09°45.33'

E 067°00.45'

Heading 300 degrees with a Light South Westerly.

The wind last night was very strong till about 0230 hrs. We had the sails set in a Goose Wing set, with the Genoa poled out. It brings home the meaning of driving through the seat of your pants, it was; literally that. The wind was very strong and it had to be kept behind you, one little twitch, 20 degrees, either way and you were in serious trouble! The boat was flying. The swell got up and up and soon we were surfing on the waves, doing at times, 20 second rides!

Hair raising stuff: the wave would loom out of the darkness, pick up the back of the boat, then the stars disappeared from in front of you and water started to cloud your vision (The boat is at 20 degrees by now looking down the face of the wave! Perfect Storm (the film) eat your heart out), you feel the boat, take off; the sails are billowing with wind, and hold your breath you're off! Like playing on the arcade machines, 'Welcome to Ocean Speed Master!!!' After a twenty second ride you slowly fall of the back of the wave and slow down, at which point you start hyperventilating because you have been holding your breath the entire time without realising it. Then a couple of seconds later you pick up the next wave and you're off. The whole cycle starts again. By the end of you three hour watch you a bundle of gibbering, dribbling, shacking mess. Then it was; hit the sack to find you can't sleep because the poor guy that is on after you is going through exactly what you left. One moment you're on the ceiling, the next you're stuck to the wall, then you find last nights boxer short stuck to your face (Unwashed and abused from over use), then you remove the shoe that you lost last week from your rectum, then you hit the ceiling again. So woke up this morning to find (No the shoe wasn't still stuck up my arse) No wind! Surprise, Surprise. So stopped Goose Winging it and we put up the Large Spinnaker. Still heading for the Seychelles on 300 degrees. We broke our distance record yesterday as well, we did 175 miles and if the wind hadn't dropped we would have made 200 easily. That's an average of 7.3 miles per hour! Well it's not going to go down in the Guinness Book for any records, but on sail power it's not bad, not bad at all.

Well we're just now hoping for the wind to come back, if we had the wind we had yesterday for the next few days we would get to the Seychelles sharpish, the way it stands now, it's looking like a week again. We think things won't change because we had this fluky weather at this latitude on the other side of the Indian Pond. Well here's hoping anyway...