The tropical days without air conditioning are starting to
tell on everyone. No one is sleeping that well in the warm muggy accommodation.
We still have a week of it to go.
The weather is still directly from astern. So the 20 knot
South Easterly wind is offering minimal cooling properties at all. At times the
sea and sky are both a brilliant blue, but as we make steady progress North,
the gloomy grey sky of the inter tropical convergence zone (ITCZ) has become
predominant. Heavy tropical rain squalls come and go, heralded by the
occasional bright rainbow. Nothing special enough to write home about though.
Our fishing skills have not improved one iota, with neither
lure appearing to be attractive to fish. The home-made lure was showing signs
of decay when we hauled it on board for the night, so I will give it a spruce
up over the next day or so.
The gannets that have accompanied us for the past few days
have now departed. They are not a tropical bird, so we are probably now beyond
their temperate foraging range.
A very funny story from last night, which occurred about
20:00 hours, at the change of the watch.
A rain squall had appeared on the radar and was tracking to
pass over us. This information was passed over from the existing lookout to the
oncoming one.
Soon after the new lookout felt the rain. It was not until
he looked down at his wet arms, that he noticed the wet spots were very white.
It transpired that a passing flock of migrating birds had found sanctuary for
the evening on the horizontal spreaders of our main mast. Prior to settling in
for the night they all needed to dump.
The 8 – 12 lookout just happened to be standing downwind and
in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I didn’t see him, but apparently he was absolutely covered
in it, as were the entire bridge deck, monkey island and foc’s’le decks the
next morning. All needed and received a good soogee.
Our noon position today was latitude 10° 19.9’ South,
Longitude 145° 18.3 East.
We continue to make a steady average speed of 11.3 knots and
we are expecting to enter the Northern Torres Strait channel at 22:00 tonight.
We have seen very few ships on this route, but are expecting the shipping to
increase as we approach the entrance to the Strait.
So it is an early night for me, in an endeavour to get some
sleep in these sticky conditions. The day time temperature barely exceeds 33°,
so the accommodation is not stiflingly hot, just still and sticky.
Signing off twenty miles South East of Torres Strait.
Captain K
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