Location: 36° 14 S, 81° 59 E
Thursday 12:00, 02.08.2007

The Schooner Maggie B was at 36° 14 S, 81° 59 E at noon on February 8th. We are motoring directly towards Perth/Fremantle at 7 knots, on a heading of 116 degrees magnetic. There is no wind, but a long, big swell is making up from the SSW. The sky is generally clear. We have come 2766 NM from the Seychelles and have 1691 to go to Perth/Fremantle.

Today is the calm before the storm. The first in a series of cold fronts should arrive about noon tomorrow. Winds maybe to 30 knots, but should be on our quarter, allowing for great speed towards Perth/Fremantle and a relatively comfortable ride. We are seeing the swell already, but no significant clouds as yet. The barometer topped out at 1022, and now is down slightly to 1020.

Readers who considered the latest Commander’s Weather advice may have puzzled over our choices with these new systems coming in, as we have. Basically one big option was to head south to get in a better spot for the next storm. I puzzled over it, making complex “what if’s” and Velocity Made Good analyses. Finally, I decided that with all the variables, we could do a lot worse that heading right for Perth/Fremantle, so that is our plan. We may have to wait a bit longer for the wind pressure, but we won’t have wandered all over the Southern Ocean.

We have been motoring a bit since Mauritius, but we are still on our first, 120 gallon, tank of diesel, with the second tank holding about 200 gallons. We use about 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 gallon per hour at 7.5 knots, so have at least 850 NM of motoring left available. From the look of the weather charts, we won’t be using a lot of diesel the rest of the way in.

Some have asked how we keep clean at sea. Very nicely, thank you, we reply with a surreptitious check of our underarm smell. In fact we are in good shape for fresh water. We started out from Mauritius with about 350 gallons of fresh water, and I have been making water with our desalination unit pretty much every day, when the engine or generator is running. We can make six gallons an hour and we pretty much still have full tanks. So a fresh water shower a day per person is usual and easily “covered,” though I occasionally growl at shipmates who I suspect of taking “Country Club” showers, just to stay in practice.

Washing clothes is a little more challenging. We have lots (and lots) of salt water and “Cold Water Tide” suds’s up nicely in cold salt water. The system is two buckets, and a bucket full of dirty clothes (three t-shirts, three underwear, and a pair of shorts, perhaps). Suds and wash in the first bucket of salt water, rinse in successive buckets of salt water until all the soap is out and then finish rinse in fresh water, hang on the rail and you are ready for a few more days! The only serious drawback is seeing just how dirty your clothes are, judging by the color of the rinse water. Hard to imagine with no real dirt within 1000 miles….

Lunch today was Hannah’s tuna noodle casserole. Some may not find that very special, but when Hannah makes it with brand-fresh sashimi-grade tuna and whole wheat rotilli, it comes out marvelously. Dessert was fresh-baked cinnamon cake. Best of all, there’s lots of leftovers for Night Watch!

All is well.