The Captain's blog
At last, to finally be given the position in society I so richly deserve. After an interesting 3 day voyage from Darwin to Banda which involved a perfect reach out of Darwin in 15 knots with kite up passing everything in sight including all but 2 of the Darwin to Ambon yacht race entrants we settled in beside Convergence, a 22m cat rigged mono owned by Randy the owner of Westmarine, the biggest chandlery in the USA. If I was to turn to the dark side and go back to monos this would be the boat. We sailed due north up the side of the Tiwi islands for around 95 miles then out into the Arafura Sea. Around midnight which is always a great time for the wind to build to 30 /35 knots and the swell to increase to 3 to 4 m with a 2m sea on top and on the beam . We had 3 reefs in the main and about 5 square metres of headsail out and were struggling to keep the speed below 10 kn. Waves were coming over the top and straight through the cockpit so the only option was to drop the main