Location: 33° 47 S, 99° 37 E
Tuesday 12:00, 02.13.2007

At noon on February 13th, the Schooner Maggie B was at 33° 47 S, 99° 37 E. We are headed 104 degrees magnetic, right for Fremantle, at 10.2 knots, hull speed. We have one reef in both the main and the fore. The wind is relatively steady from the Northwest at 18-25 knots. This is perfect sailing conditions for the Maggie B. We have occasional long swells of perhaps 10 feet that push us forward, with occasional surfing. The boat is perfectly balanced with zero rudder angle and Jorge, the Furuno Autopilot, only needs a few degrees one way or the other to handle our surfing.

We did 219 NM in the last 24 hours. We are 819 NM from Fremantle and have come 3820 NM from the Seychelles. At this speed, we will be in Fremantle in four days.

We need to get to Fremantle pretty soon because critical supplies are getting low. We are OK on garlic, coffee and Tabasco sauce, but chocolate is getting critical. We have only two more bars of dark chocolate! And Hannah has claimed one of them for the Valentine’s Day cake she is making for tomorrow. Our Twix bars and Kit Kats are all gone!! We have a pile of candy bars, but they are “Bounty” bars, which are mostly coconut with just a thin layer of chocolate on top. Yuck!

We are still seeing Dusky Shearwaters, but we seem to have gotten out of range of the Albatross. Yesterday we saw a solitary Stormy Petrel, who seemed a bit out of place 1000 miles at sea.

Those who know the sea and sea shanties, know that the words that sailors actually sang to the tunes were pretty rough and occasionally totally gross. Most modern shanties seem to be sung by choirs who have never tasted salt water, let along rum with a dose of lime juice. Like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir or Robert Shaw Chorale. For those who want a taste of the real thing, get a copy of “Rogue’s Gallery,” produced by Hal Willner. It’s great.

One of my other favorite songs is from a CD called “Scotland the Real,” where a marvelous singer named Adam McNaughtan sings a cappella a song called Oor Hamlet, which tells the whole Hamlet story, seemingly in one breath. Well worth ninety-nine cents from iTunes.

We are just coming up on an area of the seabed called the Diamantina Fracture Zone. We have been sailing along a plain of 4-5000 meters depth, but this Zone varies from 1035 meters to 7102 meters in a narrow but long area. In 1986, one ship reported “Discolored Water” near our position, along the Zone. A new island developing? Sea mounts in the Zone have interesting names, including Gulden Draak and Eendracht. I guess the the Dutch got here first, as in so many places.

Our Yanmar main engine is functioning perfectly now with the salinity probe epoxied into the opening at the bottom of the fuel filter. Whew!

All is well.