It is Sept. 16 at about 9:00 a.m. Seychelles time (we think we are still UTC +4).
For those of you who have been following our position on seahike.com, you know that we have been underway since about 2:30 p.m. on the 14th.

We had a fair amount of rain and squall activity the first night, which made for bad sleeping and comfort conditions. Well, I (Cindy) slept like a baby, but I always do, so that might not count. We think the seas were about four meters the first night. They were predicted to be 2.2 meters at seven second intervals yesterday, which is probably about right.

The first 24-hour period we measured, we sailed 133 nautical miles (nm). We have reached the point where the winds will be a bit lighter (10-15 kts) for a couple of days.
We have been sailing to the wind, so our track to the east side of Socotra, our first waypoint, is not straight. All by design. 🙂

As for sailing conditions thus far, the boat is a rockin’ and a rollin’ and one needs to hold on tight when walking. We even have to secure items as we would on a monohull so they don’t end up on the floor in the saloon and galley.

We finally mounted the radar to the mast the day we left. Spike, the skipper on the boat next to us, helped out quite a bit. Jason mounted the bracket, which was probably the hardest part.

I went to the top of the mast to check things out and take pictures of the current state. I also helped to run a pull string through the mast at the level of the spreaders to facilitate pulling cables through the mast in the future.

Michael went to town to buy a fishing rod on the 14th. Cost 4,800 rupees. The three of us combined efforts to load the fishing line onto the reel yesterday. Jason has been in charge of fishing. We will let you know when he catches something. (See the “when” not “if” – positive thinking.)

Speaking of fish, we’ve found six or seven flying fish on our boat. I guess they want to join us.

Sent from Iridium Mail & Web.