Lat 26.973S
Lon 44.6 58E
The winds continued to build through the night. From my bunk up front the racket from the seas and the riggging was deafening and I resorted to earplugs which helped, a lot. We were running under the smaller spinnaker and howling along, all the while I expected to be called to help shorten sail. That call came around 11:00pm and I came on deck to find 30 knot winds with the boat making 14 knots in the wave surges. We swapped out the spinnaker for the jib and even with no sails set we were humming along. Changing foresails on the foredeck of a heaving monohull at night in a lively sea is tricky business. On a catamaran it is a piece of cake, having all the room in the world on the trampoline strung forward between the two hulls.
It was a spectacularly pretty night with the half moon turning the seas to liquid silver and the air warm enough to be in shorts and T-shirts. From time to time I still have to pinch myself to remind me that I really am in the middle of the Indian Ocean and to be here on a shimmering night like this really was something special.
I came back up on watch at 3:00 am and we were making fine progress though the moon had set leaving a clear star filled night sky. At 5:00 am we rounded the southern tip of Madagascar and made our turn for our Durban waypoint which puts us close to Richards Bay. From there we expect to be washed south to Durban as we cross the Agulhas current or put into Richards Bay if we need refuge. We are about 550 miles from that point, so 750 miles to Durban.
Today is another lovely sunny day, about 85F and the breeze feels cool. Our instruments show that we are surround by freighter traffic, I can see over 30 within scanner range and it looks like a dodge'em car track, but only rarely can we actually see more than one at a time with our own eyes. The horizon is deceptively close when you are sea level.
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