Last night, while we continued to pound to weather for most of the night, we enjoyed another moonless, starry night which gave way to another overcast, gloomy morning and a washed out sunrise. In fact, even the colour of the sky and the sea are washed out with the constant haze. Fortunately, though, the wind died down, which quietened the swell somewhat, although we had to slow down and do a bit of zigzagging to get the best angle to the swell in order to run the watermaker. Sadly, our tactics were in vain, since the watermaker still sucked in air with all the bouncing around.
Regardless, while we still had our cruising friends for company, we’ve also had dolphins and it’s been lovely to see so much birdlife again, including the most beautiful bird we had as a hitchhiker for most of yesterday.
Today we continued our slow crawl towards Suakin and slow it is for a number of reasons, but primarily because the distance to this destination is an awkward one; we have no choice, but to spend an extra night at sea in order to transit the last 30NM through the numerous outer reefs around the entrance to Suakin during daylight hours. This means getting to Owen Reef and the northerly lighthouse north of Suakin at sunrise, before turning to port and heading back in a southwesterly direction to weave through the reefs in the deeper water. The alternative was to take the inside channel, but we’ve received reports of navy patrols harassing cruisers at anchor, who’ve had no choice but to stop overnight on this route due to all the reefs.
This afternoon Roy set about filling our diesel tanks, given that we hadn’t sailed since our initial sail across the bay on departing Djibouti and with that another slow, tedious passage continued, or so we thought.
Just before the evening net, the wind picked up slightly out of the northeast, providing a decent angle to sail or at least motor-sail. However, ourselves and Talulah Ruby III first had to deal with a few fishing boats behaving in a rather suspicious manner, but, after a prolonged net to ensure none of the yachts encountered any precarious situations, we raised the mainsail, unfurled the headsail and looked forward to a lovely night of sailing. That was until we found ourselves in the middle of “navy warship operations”, per the reference on the VHF radio, directing us to alter course and ensure a 3NM CPA (Closest Point of Contact) to a stationary ship we could see ahead of us. We thought we were inconvenienced, but Golden Spirit was given a diversion of 6NM in the opposite direction. What a carry-on which lasted until 2100, resulting in Elaine not getting a wink of sleep during her off shift with all the radio chatter and the strong smell of oil burning as we approached the stationary ship. It was at this point Paw Paw started to vibrate uncharacteristically. Giving up on sleep altogether and charging up to the cockpit just as Roy put the starboard engine into idle, the preliminary investigations suggested the propeller had caught something, but nothing a reverse thrust couldn’t solve, thankfully. By then, being wide awake, Elaine decided to come on watch an hour earlier so that Roy could, at least, get some rest, but we’d also given up on a sail too, so down came the sails. Thinking that was the end of this little saga, the diversion unfortunately put us in the middle of a cargo ship anchorage, which occupied Elaine for the next few hours as she weaved Paw Paw through the maze! What a night!
