It was calm for several days, then the wind picked up overnight. It’s 20–25 knots for now; we’re expecting 30. The swell immediately turned nasty, but at least our progress towards the destination has become much more noticeable. The day before yesterday, we passed the 4,000-mile mark to Australia. We have only 3,810 miles (7,050 km) left to go. It’s just over 1,500 miles to Kerguelen—about 15 days’ sailing. If you find Kerguelen Island on a world map (49° south, roughly in the middle of the Indian Ocean), you’ll see that the “direct” route via Amsterdam Island at the 37th parallel looks considerably shorter than dropping down to the 49th parallel and then climbing back up to the 30s. But in fact, the “diagonal” route via Kerguelen is 200 miles shorter than that “direct” route. Pretty cool, isn’t it? That’s because the Earth is a sphere, and the 49th parallel is shorter than the 35th.
Breakdown News
Yesterday we cleared out the hold, and the captain fixed the electrical faults; the engine starts again. The leak in the hold has been stopped. Our young sailor is learning declensions. Nastya is studying yacht-captain theory. Andrei is reading; I’m writing. Buckwheat for breakfast and lunch, then burritos. A film stretched over two breakfasts—“Planet Ocean”—highly recommended. We’ve entered a belt of fog. The sunny high-pressure system has given way to a low. Visibility is half a mile at best; we’re sailing on instruments, just as we did off Cape Horn. Nastya is still ill; we’re treating her cough, and her fever has almost gone.
In other news, a few days ago our main navigation iPad died. With it went the email app and the form we use to send our coordinates to MarineTraffic. Navigation is now on the old spare iPad, and email is on an ageing MacBook. Both are a bit glitchy. Once we reach the mainland, we’ll have to replace at least one MacBook and one iPad. Combined with the cost of flights for a visit to Russia, the total looks depressing :). And while we were ashore, we didn’t manage to hand over the reins of our Instagram account to the shore team, assuming we could simply send them the login password by email. But no: the system detects an unusual Instagram login location and asks for confirmation via email. And the email account, in turn, asks for confirmation via phone. A vicious circle. Looks like there won’t be any Instagram posts again until Australia. One more reason to berate ourselves for being disorganised.
Moods and Philosophy
The shipping lanes are behind us; for a week now, there has been nobody in the ocean but us. We don’t even see any birds. Dolphins dropped by the day before yesterday. For some reason, it is today that the month and a half to Australia seems endless. Probably the general gloominess of the mood. And the strong winds haven’t even begun yet. I wonder what tune I’ll be singing tomorrow? As our friend Helma, first mate of the yacht Sunny Spray, wrote to us: living your dream doesn’t mean that every day will be wonderful. It means gaining experience you could never have gained any other way. It can be bad or good. Or like today. Never mind: after all, we only grow when things are hard. So apparently we’re growing right now. And tomorrow is another day. The main thing is: hang in there, folks—summer is coming soon! And we hope to see many of you when we fly home.
Thank You
Our heartfelt thanks to the group supporting our expedition through
PayPal
and
Yandex.Money
Huge thanks to Yakov R., Maxim F., Vladimir K., Alexander D., Roman, and Iouli A.! Friends, do you know how much you motivate us not to give up? You really, really do! Wishing you happiness and dreams come true, our dear shore team!
And another huge thank-you to the shore HQ represented by Katya and Pyotr Rogov and Sergei Yakubenko. Damn, guys, what would we do without you? )) The route map and current conditions are still available under the
“Route” tab,
courtesy of our tireless Iridium tracker from MVS Telecom.
Sending hugs to all of you from the 42nd parallel. We’re looking forward to your greetings and comments, and we truly appreciate having you with us!