This one's a composite: middle watch from here
SFSG! We may have finessed this one - just far enough north to avoid the blast - still in about 20 kt but the sea is relatively easy so far. Twin poled, furler and storm jib, double lines from the tiller to Kevvo (originals just a bit frayed), holding our collective breath. The tail end of this one, just ahead of the front and the low behind it, has 30+ knots forecast and it's on our latitude so we'll see. Meantime, hooning towards the barn door at around 6kts. In 68 miles, we will be south of Dirk Hartog Island and the Australian mainland and we are now only 577 miles from the closest point of Oz, down near Albany.
So - doom and gloom suspended for the time being, knuckles still in moderate grackle mode and appendages firmly crossed. Sweaty when you have to keep them like that for so long!
Somewhere out there, there's a hippo buying high heels over the internet. Don't know whether s/he's a cross dresser or just thinks it's cool to be hippo in blahniks. Definitely a cut above the mud wallows around Devon. No - I haven't gone completely loony - just the hippo.
We have a deadline. I have 7 coffee filters left from the pack of 250 that came with the jug I bought what seems years ago in Nome but was really only 18 months or so. I am recycling them - I can always get 2 cups but they tend to disintegrate after the second, so we must be in Hobart in 14 days or I go cold turkey. A variation on Prufrock, may his memory live on.
0630 from here:
Still hooning and looking good - sitting in 20 kt Nwesterly and the barn door beckons. Grackled knuckles less grackly - sea not too bad, Berri loving it - twin poles, rolling with the seas and surging along.
