Day 7

Wind steady again all day – 15kt from the east. Stayed on starboard gybe all day. The large rolling swell seems to have disappeared replaced by shorter confused waves.  Still reasonably comfortable though.  We were hoping for a positive current but it came and went and never really came to anything.  This morning we have around a quarter of a knot with us so that’s a start!  There was a lot of cloud about during the day but we still never got that well-needed rain! 

We’ve now got 2 more boats joining us for the SSB net – Iona who are on their way from Darwin to Cocos but about 200 miles behind us and Yindee Plus who are already at Cocos.  We’ve brought the time of the SSB forward an hour in the mornings to try and improve propagation (relative to sunrise) – we’re now almost at GMT + 6.5 hrs.  The sun is setting 10 minutes later each night – last night it set at 19.05 and rose at around 07.30 this morning.  We now have just a half moon which doesn’t rise until about 1am so we see the stars twinkling away quite clearly.  

The days actually seem to go along quite nicely - we generally run the generator for around an hour and half first thing – whilst that’s on every other day I bake bread - I have to keep turning the bread maker round otherwise we have ‘bread on the side’.  The generator charges the batteries to about 90% then the solar panels top them off during the day. While the generator is on, we also make water, heat the water, and do some microwave baking and charge computers, kindles etc. SSB radio net twice a day.  Then a daily check around the boat.  Shower day today so that’ll take up a bit of time rocking and rolling around in the shower (maybe a bit of singing too)!  We do a lot of reading - I actually managed to get some of the August blog written yesterday – just need to sort out some photos now out of the million we took! And so the day goes by and before we know it, it’s time for dinner!

We were surprised to see a shark maudying about near the surface – didn’t recognise the type – black dorsal fin and tail – around 2m in length.   4 tropic birds and a clutch of other sea birds – possibly shearwaters.

Around 250nm to go, so should be making a night landing in Cocos Sunday evening.

24 hours miles: 180

Position at 08.30 –1 September (GMT+8):  S13:05:934 E101:06:055

PS Please remember to remove our message before you reply and no photos or attachments as it makes it quicker for us to download - Thank you