BLUEMOMENT

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A rather more saily and drama-laden blog than usual from Mojomo today, so I thought I would post it here:

The Cape of Good Hope is otherwise know as the Cape of Storms. Waves big enough snap ships in half, Biggest Seas in the world, The sinking of Derbyshire, freak 60 foot waves, it's all here. Rather unfairly, when your boat or ship does get casually bifurcated, there's lots of Great White Sharks eager for a snack.

Now, Bx says...Next Sun evening : "NEF7 (though a bit local) around Richard's Bay stretching up from 32South. Monday shows a 180deg shift to S/SW F7 in am, then F5 in pm"

And Cornell says this about this South African Coast "...areas of low pressure move along the coast in a NE direction. It is not uncommon during such conditions for the wind to suddenly change from a near NE gale to a full SW gale. As mentioned ... a SW gale combined with the strong south-flowing current can create giant waves 60ft in height and even higher."

As bx suggests, this means that it would be a jolly good idea to get to Richard's Bay by next Sunday morning, if possible - arriving by midday GMT =local time 4pm, 118 hours, 774nm ... 6.6 knots average required, or better. So far this leg we've not really been able to do this. But suddenly, somehow, I feel that we WILL be able to do this, because the gianty waves are due beam on, on Monday.

For non-Brits "jolly good idea" in the paragraph above is an example of understatement, or "litotes". What I mean is that really, it's very important for us to get the hell over to Richard's Bay ASAP and by Sunday at the very latest.

Game on, eh? I trimmed the sails a bit and we're doing 8 knots.

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27:29S 44:36E at 0400 weds and Mo's headlong rush to harbour continues. Richard Bay is still 667nm distant, and Sunday afternoon (or maybe later, or maybe earlier) is when an entire sewage farm is due to hit a lot of extremely large fans, metaphorically speaking, because that's when the weather is gonna turn Bad or perhaps Extra Bad.

However, look, don't have a mad panic and don't organise rescue helicopters, because the average speed we need has dropped from 6.7 to 6.4, we're doing almost 8 knots now, we've got enough fuel to motor most of the way there, and at this rate we might even be there very late Saturday. So we should be fine. So don't worry, okay?

Losing so many ships over the years with the Agulhas current and violent weather hereabouts has attracted much research. Our friend MarkJ has been checking it all out, partly to find out exactly where the current is located because that decides if the waves become very big, or absolutely enormous. He's found several scholarly articles such as the one that explains how the linear relation between the strength of the Agulhas Current at nominal latitude 34°S and the gradient in sea level height anomaly across the
current has been investigated in a numerical ocean model. Results show that the strength of the current can be estimated with reasonable accuracy using altimeter data, once it has been calibrated using in-situ transport measurements. Hm, most interesting. But he admits that nobody details exaccerly where it is and isn't. We think it's about at the 200-180 depth contour anyway, just a few miles offshore.

Martin's been in touch and suggested that if Mo' does actually snap in half, it's best stay with the half with the galley. Thanks Martin.

Meanwhile Sarah is in Grenada, where the internet is so slow that the service provider actually writes down stuff on bits of paper and paddles out to her boat with it all every few weeks. So she's only just found out about the new spinnaker idea. She suggests perhaps a "Mister men" design, or a "Little Miss" design or one with the washing instructions in HUGE letters, and some other nice ideas too. Sorry Sarah - we've already ordered another one, about a month ago, and mentioned it on the blog? We (kate) re-fixed Mr Pink and it last less than an hour, but we'd already orgainsed a new spi to meet us at Cape Town. It's a skull and crossbones one, again, partly cos
that's Mojomo's thing now, and partly cos we wouldn't be able to approve any new artwork whilst out here, and partly cos if you have any lettering on a spi you spend hours or even days looking at huh witty remark (or boat name) in mirror writing, so I try avoid that. The smiley skull and crossbones is quite good? We'll have a slightly busted small spi called Roger, and a new identical spi except quite lot bigger, called Big Roger.