27/2/08 19:00

Early afternoon the wind dropped so much we started motoring. It’s now veering NNE to North and then to NW where it will be strongest.  We don’t think there will be too much power in it, but you never know down here.  While motoring on the level this afternoon everyone had hot showers so we’re all more civilized, but we’ll be sleeping in our clothes tonight as both heaters are dead for the moment.

It’s less than 200 miles to go and if we are able to keep motoring, we’ll be in
Puerto Williams mid evening tomorrow.  Sailing at 4 or 5 knots doesn’t interest me at the moment. And oh yeah it’s raining again.

22:30

After dinner the wind came up and we resumed sailing.   The wind instruments indicated that the wind speed was 10 knots when in fact it was more like 25.  The Analogue wind instruments show us sailing 20 degrees to the wind at nearly 10 knots in a true wind speed of 8 knots.  Of course total fantasy.  The digital instruments showing cardinal wind direction i.e. “ENE” etc is not a million miles out but everything else is. Maybe the wind indicator at the top of the mast was damaged is yesterday’s blow, maybe it’s had calibration amnesia; we’ll have to investigate when we get to Ushuaia.

28/2/08 09:00

We drew level with Cape Horn again at 8AM.

Our weather router sent us an up date yesterday saying we would run out of wind until 11PM last night when it would fill SW increasing to about 5.

 Almost right.

We had wind all day and by early evening we had NNE Force 7/8.   Our latest GRIB files suggested it would veer North and then NW getting stronger as it went. Gabriele and I on watch together were quite surprised when it began to veer it actually decreased as it went NW. We kept altering course to the West to maintain boat speed.  At Midnight Nik replaced Gabriele on watch and it was time to tack as the wind was now going SW. We tacked, adjusted the sails and settled in when the SW wind went from Force 6 to Force 9 in about as many seconds.   Lots of frantic reefing to keep control of the boat.

This wind increased to Force 10 and for a while we were doing 8 knots with no foresail and just a very, very, deeply reefed main. After an hour or so it decreased to Force 8 which by comparison seems a bit tame and in the next hour dropped some more and by 9AM was a benign SSE Force 4. 

A zipper on the bimini was severely damaged and will have to be replaced. A leech line pocket on the main sail will have to be rest itched but so far that appears to the extent of the damage.  The heater that does the towel rads and the forward cabins has mysteriously started working again whilst mine remains on strike.

10:00AM

The wind's gone back to SW Force 3 and we’re motoring. In the last 24 hours the wind has totally boxed the compass, not to mention Spindrift’s ears.

12 Noon

I’ve just worn my sunglasses for the third time this trip. The wind has dwindled to SW Force 1. Our 24 hour run in all that wind was 200 miles.  Only 45 to go to Puerto Williams, we will be in before 18:00.  About 30 dolphins have come to greet us and we also just passed a group of a dozen or so seals.  They don’t do things by half measures down here.