Birds, fish and full moon

The moon must be about 90 percent full tonight. With a brilliantly clear sky it makes for bright conditions. We’ve seen Albatros/Shearwater family birds all day. Almost without fail they come to check out Sunny Spells with a couple of circuits and then head off. We also had four flying fish on deck this morning. We found them over the course of a couple of h and threw them overboard as we found them. Won’t be so wasteful tomorrow morning – they might make a good lunch!

Position 13° 22.946′ N 60° 47.320′ E
COG 278T
SOG 7.3kt

Lat 13.382433: Lon 60.788667

Making miles in good conditions

A full day of reaching in 12 to 16 knots, seeing a very consistent 7.5 knots of boat speed. We!ve Made 86 miles in the last 12 h so hould easily make 160 miles again for the 24 h. As we prepared for dinner the wind freshened to 24 knots in the gusts and we put in 3 reefs and rolled away two thirds of the headsail. Boat speed was still 7.5 knots. We are about to swap charts on the chartplotter, replacing the ?Asia and South China Sea? charts with ?Africa and the Red Sea?!

Position 13° 22.946′ N 60° 47.320′ E
COG 278T
SOG 7.3kt

Lat 13.382433: Lon 60.788667

Leaving the equatorial climate

You know you’re moving into a different climate when you bring your dressing gown and doona out of retirement! We’ve spent the last 4 months between 10 degrees south and 10 degrees north, almost always sheltered by the land masses of south-east Asia. It’s been hot and humid, with the temperature in a very narrow band between 28 and 34 degrees. Sea surface temperatures have been just under 30 degrees throughout, further stabilising the ambient temperatures. That has all rapidly changed in the last couple of nights as we sailed west into the Arabian Sea and slowly edged north (now more than 13 degrees north). The NE monsoon is bringing cool winds off the snow capped mountains of Kashmir and Persia, making it a positively frosty 24 degrees last night. Djibouti is at 11 degrees 30 minutes north, so we will head south again once we turn into the Internationally Recognised Transit Corridor (IRTC) north of Socotra. Expecting night time temperatures to continue dropping as we close the land masses of the Middle East.

Position 13° 14.213′ N 61° 59.374′ E
COG 279T
SOG 6.9kt

Lat 13.236883: Lon 61.989567

Time moves at 4 minutes per degree of longitude

A measure of our progress is that the sunrise is noticeably later every morning. Having sailed west through 16 degrees of longitude, we’re due to make another 30 minute adjustment today to make a full hour time zone change since leaving Cochin.

Position 13° 14.213′ N 61° 59.374′ E
COG 279T
SOG 6.9kt

Lat 13.236883: Lon 61.989567