Day 88
By God’s grace I am alive and well. Today I greeted my 88th dawn in the Southern Ocean. I am very glad that the sun rose ahead, as my course dictates, and not astern as it has been in the last couple of days. For more than a day there has been a headwind which swept me 1 degree back. Now I have crossed the 121’23 Western longitude, which I had already crossed two days ago, on 2 March.
Since 12 February, I have been unable to travel ten degrees East. From the start I have been covering ten degrees longitude in 10-12 days, but the 130-120 degree range in the Western longitude has decided to fight a war of attrition against me. I am completely exhausted. Tomorrow (5 March) will mark exactly 3 weeks since my first attempt to cross the 120 degrees Western longitude, but the ocean would not allow me to move East.
Last week the Southerly winds blew me to 46’15 degrees latitude. I’ve only come that far North a couple of times, and that was in December of last year when I found myself alongside Chatham Island. From the 47th parallel, I need to travel 600 miles South in order to pass Cape Horn. If I can’t get to the right latitude, I run the risk of being swept to the Western shore of Chile. I need at least a week, but ideally two, of North-Westerly winds in order to cross into 52-53 degrees South.
When the winds have calmed just before the headwind started to blow, I scrubbed the hull with a special broom-brush. Charlie Pitcher suggested it to me and I’m glad I have it on board. The broom has a scraper and is bent in the form of a shoulder-yoke, which I can angle under the hull and give it a good scrub. I managed to get rid of the seaweed and barnacles, and now the boat is going a little more merrily.
I’m regretting that we applied so few coats of antifouling paint to the hull – we only applied 3 coats, when we should have made it 6. The more the better. We had expected the Southern Ocean to be too cold to allow the boat to overgrow. We had also thought the journey would be over in 100 days…
Photo: New Zealand, Port Chalmers. 09.11.2018
Before the start I decided not to lift the boat out of the water, I just asked the boys from http://www.divepro.co.nz to dive underneath and clean it with a sponge. The boat was fully loaded, and I was scared of bringing it out of the water on a trailer (you have to take off the rudder, disconnect the autopilot, and here is always the risk of damaging something in the process). We waited a month for favourable weather to set out, and damaging the hull would have meant a week of repairs and missing our window (which was only a day long). I will keep cleaning it with the brush when the weather permits.
The ocean is dark and even of leaden colour. There is frequent fog and dampness, which makes me think icebergs are nearby. But satellite images show that icebergs are south of 55 degrees latitude, and have stayed far to the South this season. That is good; one less thing to worry about.
Regards to all,
Fedor Konyukhov
47’10 South
121’40 West