Captain's Log
20 February 2000

The Big Pool

Yesterday afternoon we had the ship under absolutely full sail. The whomper, fore staysail, three square sails, main staysail, fisherman staysail, main and main gaff topsail. We managed to get cranking along at over 8 kts with only 15 kts of breeze. You’ve got to be happy with that.Overnight the wind gradually eased off and backed to the SE as expected. At 0400 with the wind light and variable, the ship did an inadvertent wear. It was all hands on deck to sort out the muddle. With the speed down to 2 kts and the required speed to arrive on time going up, we reluctantly gave up on sailing and started the engines at 0630. We had managed 48 hrs without them so it wasn’t too bad.Today is just glorious, a perfect day for a swim, so that is what we did. We conducted a man overboard exercise and handed in all remaining sail. With that out of the way we rigged the swing rope from the lower yard and opened the pool. The water was warm and crystal clear. It can be quite uncanny swimming in the middle of an ocean with the bottom 1.5 km beneath you. The youth crew thought it awesome. During swimming sessions I always have a crew member with a rifle standing by in case a shark turns up univited.It is unlikely that we will get much in the way of wind this afternoon so we will continue to chug along towards Sydney and take it easy and work on our tans.

Latitude/Longitude:

33° 38' South / 160° 59'

Conditions:

Course 270, Speed 8kts, Wind 080/3kts, Temp 25c, blue skies, dead calm seas