April 15, 2017
While we don’t really keep up with the news (mostly too depressing), we are interested in current affairs – that is the affairs of the ocean currents that always seem to be against us! We were making great time and it was looking like we’d be in Sydney early this morning. That changed last night and we’ve spent the last 12 hours or more with more than two knots of current against us.
The Eastern coast of Australia has a pretty constant, strong, southbound current. We avoided it mostly by staying close to shore. That strategy let us down last night. We even signed up for a service called TideTech to see what the Bass Strait and coastal currents would be doing during our trip. That didn’t help much for two reasons. One: we’re so slow that there was nothing we could do about the twice-daily changes in currents in the Bass Strait. Two: the information wasn’t very accurate (or maybe just not detailed enough inshore) to help us on this last, painful, slow leg.
Oh well. We’ll get there eventually. I think we have enough fuel?! -Rich
