Day 8

How quickly the sea builds up!  As expected the wind started to get up around lunchtime and gradually increased to around 25 knots with gusts up to around 30kts. The seas went from a lovely rolling swell to lumpy and confused and back up to around 3m.  The wind didn’t go round to the south east when forecast so we had a fairly uncomfortable night with the wind and waves on the beam (things going bump in the night scenario!) 

The wind has died back a bit this morning to around 20 knots and has gone more to the east but the seas still big and confused – we’re hoping they’ll pull themselves together soon or we’ll have to give them a good talking to!  Current speed is anywhere between 7 and 9 knots! 

100% cloud cover which makes everything that steely grey colour.  The fix on the furler pin seems to be holding so that’s good news.  Guess it’ll be more reading, suduko-ing and podcasts with Jenny Murray today…thank goodness for the BBC.

We’ve now crossed the Mid Indian Ocean basin which is the deepest part at 4400m, and are now on the Central Indian ridge at a mere 3000m, about 600nm south of Diego Garcia. It’s not the deepest of oceans, but certainly more impressive than the English channel at 90m!

Date and time: 23rd September 10.15 local (GMT + 6.5 hrs) 

Position:  S18:26:334 E071:01:991

24 hours distance:  195 nm