50´40.9S 057´10.2W course 191´ speed 5,1kn
What was a beautiful morning, with high waves, but light sailable winds, turned into a squally afternoon with lots of big showers around. Around 04:00 I still felt confident that the wind would stay for a while and we swapped the middle jib for the big jib. Weather report seemed stable with decreasing winds in the afternoon and then increasing again from the West instead of the Southwest by evening fall. Sadly enough the wind did not stay, after an hour we had to start the engine to keep the speed up, as we were making our way up against 3 to 4 meter swell from the South Southwest. Very strange we thought.
We kept the sails up as they helped and were able to do 7,5 knots towards our goal.

Then in the morning watch the weather changed. They got some rain and some clouds around that were not there in the early morning. And then around 10 o clock a big black cloud came rushing onto us from the windward side. I got pulled from my sleep with the mention of a dark ominous looking cloud rushing in, very unexpected out of the blue. That doesn’t sound good, so we started to take away sail. As I had come rushing outside with sails as priority, I neglected to put on rain gear.. Which may have been a big mistake. As the charming picture of the day made by Magnus at the helm, shows.
The jib was down in minutes and the cloud with strong wind was soon upon us. Gusts were visible on the water, we were heading downwind already but the winds were strong and so down came the mainsail. This was hard, with the strong winds blowing into the sails as we headed downwind. But even before we got the main packed, the wind gave another push. Hail was coming down and with the force of the wind, it felt like beebeegun shots to our bodies. I could not look into the wind any more, with the cold air stinging my face already, the hail was just on top of that. Another gust, we heeled over on just mizzen and forestaysail, so down the mizzen came as well. Leaving just the forestaysail up. And the rain pouring down.
We kept changing course with every gust and first we were heading East, then Northeast. Then we saw lightning in the squall, hitting the water just hundreds of meters away and arching above us. With only a staysail on and a half packed mainsail, we gybed. With that we moved away from the squall, but also, the wind came into the sail on the other side and it became easier to get the mizzen down and the mainsail packed away. We worked hard for about an hour and a half, and in the end we ended back on course with just a forestaysail set and blue skies around! Like nothing had ever happened.
Now we knew where the waves had come from..
Downstairs, in the nice warm cosy saloon or cabins, nobody noticed all this going on, they just heard the engine ref change every now and then (to slow us down a little while heading the wrong way).
The whole afternoon we had showers which brought on stronger winds with a backing wind direction. But behind the clouds, we were able to get back on our course as the wind veered again. Right now, headwinds are starting and our speed is down. Often we hit a wave and are down to 4 knots, previous watch was defending our degrees made west with tooth and nail and so steering a very high to the wind course, ended up doing only 12 miles in 4 hours.. But we are getting there. It reminds me of last year though.
It is still very cold outside, stinging cold. I think the night temperature is down to about 4 degrees right now, with wind chill to almost 0 degrees. Another shower is closing in on us, hopefully Soete can evasive manoeuvre around it and make it pass behind us. On the radar I can see its a cloud of about 5 miles long and 2 miles wide. We can do without! 64 more miles to go.
All is well on board, Jet