Lonely waters
Like cowboys riding for days across the open plain, we sail onward over the endless azure seas. Miles and miles and miles of Indian Ocean. Sunset, sunrise, sunset, sunrise, the days fly past in quick succession. Our closest known human companion is our friend John on S/V “Sapphire”, about 700 miles distant. Otherwise, we are quite alone out here! It’d be like being the only person in Minneapolis, Minnesota and having just one other “neighbor” in Dallas, Texas. “Privateer” has sailed us to the far corners of the planet.
We logged a solid 164 NM day, chugging along on our beam reach with a few hours of wing-on-wing in the afternoon. Except for moving the little piece of string that sets the course for the Monitor, and poling out the Yankee once, very little needed to be done sailing-wise. We played with Taz, napped, and even watched a movie. These are “easy miles” at sea.
This next week the winds and seas are forecast to freshen up to 25 knots with 4-meter seas for a few days before dying down again. If the GRIBS hold true we should have a pretty great sail. Now that we’re south of the rhumb line, we’ll have a good angle of attack for the new winds to come.
Our SSB propagation is starting to fade away and this may be the last post for a week or more, until I can load journals from the internet on shore. We use radio relay stations in Brunei and South Africa, but we seem to be entering into a no-man’s land between the two. All is well on board “Privateer” and we are enjoying the solitude and the wide-open seas!
