Day 108

09 April 2014

Fedor via the Iridium satellite phone: “Wednesday, April 9th, the wind is rising again, 15-18 knots, and of course, the whitecaps are back. For the next week and a half it will be very critical for me to keep rowing at the 25° south. If I advance too far south, there is the risk of being swept by the counter current that would take me to the South Pacific Ocean past New Zeeland. If, on the other hand, I go too far north, I’m risking being dragged into a maze of the archipelago Tonga and later on, the Fiji’s. So, for the next week, I’m going to do all in my power to stay within the 25°-26° south until I cross the 180° longitude. The weather might not cooperate, though. The forecast is such that the wind will become north-easterly by tomorrow. There is a severe tropical cyclone Ita raging in the vicinity of the north-east coast of Australia. They say that in about a week the cyclone will subside to a tropical storm, but it’ not very comforting to me. I will still have to face the aftershock of the Ita. I’m hoping that this is the last cyclone of the season. 

I ran the water maker for about an hour today, and got 30 liters of fresh water. This amount should last me a few days. For the first time since my start in Chile, I installed a new autopilot by Raymarine. Before the start, we estimated that for 9000 miles I would need 3 autopilots. My friends Simon Chalk and Charlie Pitcher had told me that one autopilot is enough for a one-way rowing across the Atlantic Ocean, which is about 3000 nautical miles. I don’t use the autopilot often: the sun is a rare thing here and the accumulators always run pretty low. There is no way I could use the autopilot day and night. Therefore, one autopilot lasted me almost 7000 nautical miles. I could probably row across the world with the remaining two autopilots, not that I’m planning on doing that. I’m with you. Fedor.”

The map of the Tourgoyak’s course: http://yb.tl/konyukhov2

The detailed map of the course: www.oceanrowing.com/Konyukhov/Pacific2013/dist_map.htm

Translated by Tatiana Koreski

 

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