25’06.8S 129’35.0W course 272′ speed 5,5
At watchhand over, Gijs said, ‘Jet we have to take the mainsail down, we are too fast’. Hahaha, thats a new one! Pitcairn was 43 miles away at our watch handover of 00 hours and we were speeding along with 8,5 / 9 knots. Our arrival at Pitcairn needs to be with daylight as we have to find a safe anchorage. So we took the mainsail down. A neat nice job, with two watches. The main sail was down and stowed away, deck clean and watch handed over in 15 minutes. Job well done!
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitcairneilanden
And so now we have 27 miles to go, we are still a little too fast as we surf down some pretty big ocean swell. The swell is coming from two almost opposite directions. Our own swell, of the wind we have, is about 1,5 meters high coming from the East. And then there is the massive swell coming from the South West. A swell that is over 3 meters high and travels very slowly but surely underneath us. It lifts us up and we surf down on the back of it. Here we lose the wind for a little bit, as the wind on the back of the wave is almost opposite of the true wind, cancelling it in its wake. These two swells will make our landing on Pitcairn difficult and so we will have to see what the island looks like by daylight.
Right now we have some showers around us, but our deck is still dry. Inside the radar lights up some green spots. Outside our small box is playing some Jazz music from Henri’s playlist as Martin is steering us down another big swell. The deck is still slightly lit up by the moonligh and life is good. Tinke has just woken up for her 03:00 to 09:00 watch, time to have a coffee with her.
All well on board, Jet
