Thursday 22 January – heading south

As soon as we were awake we set off, Rowan got Pinkz, our asymmetric sail out the front locker and up while we still had flat waters. Always a bit nervous getting these big sails out when we have not had them up for a while. It went like a dream and we were soon cruising along at 9 knots in about 16 knots of wind. It was a comfy great ride while it lasted. Plenty of big tankers about, we are definitely crossing a shipping route.

By midday the wind had completely gone, it was hovering around 3 knots, we had to get the engines back on. It was so frustrating, all of the seven weather models Rowan was looking at, all said we had wind. We were definitely in some sort of shadow, we thought the wind was about 5 miles east of us so we spent an hour motoring east with no luck. It was a whole afternoon of motoring gently, we are not too sure where we can next get fuel, there doesn’t seem to be suitable fuel in Wakatobi. So we are being a bit cautious. Of course as evening approached the wind picked up, but because of the risk of hitting things in the water, we will sail with just the jib again, to keep us under 4 knots of boat speed, so that if we do hit something it should not do too much damage. I did the first shift as usual, there were plenty of fishing boats out all brightly lit up and easy to see even if they don’t show up on radar.