Indian Ocean Crossing 22 October - 02 December 2015

For this passage we were in belt and braces mode -storm jib hanked on to inner forestay and the para anchor line laid from bow to stern ready to attach and deploy. The passage saw everything from no wind and flat seas motoring up to NE 40-45 kts and very confused 4 metre seas. We found foul current down the east coast of Madagascar with 2.5kts against us and we focused later on just beating hurricane force winds.
On this trip we found a lot of current against us. The charts show the South Equatorial Current setting generally westwards at 1- 1.5 knots and then turning southwards down the African coast as the Aghulas current. The reality is much more complicated as can be seen by following this link.

The good conditions of the first few days allowed us to rest up, after that on every other day there were items needing our attention as detailed here:-
Answering radio calls as our friends Rosemary and Alfred on Iron Horse, a day behind us, were abandoning their boat because of multiple failures and it was a tense few hours before they sent photos from MV Bittern enroute to Singapore.
Second batten from bottom of main broke - replaced
Noise under aft bunk - connection between autopilot and steering quadrant loose - tightened.
Need to take towed generator in before starting engine - going 6kn - lost it.

The bottom set of bolts had come undone!

Noise from engine compartment and no power - shaft had come uncoupled from gear box- had to rotate shaft against pressure of propeller trying to turn it. Hove to for 4 hours roped shaft to pull it forwards back into engine compartment, rotated it and aligned bolts and tightened screws. Getting the first one on was the most difficult and took over an hour.
The gimbal that allowed that cooker to swing broke - temporary fix failed - down to one precarious pot cooking.
Blocked water inlet from fresh water pump softened by engine heat - didn't fix as there was 70 litres of fresh water in cans on board and our mind set was else where.
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Our weather guru Commanders Weather Corporation advised us four days from landfall that there was a monster cold front coming and to ready the boat and ourselves as the last twelve hours would be pretty rugged. Our incentive to get in was the thought of being in SSW winds of 70kts over the Aghulas Current and horrible 6-9 m seas.
Sea Bunny's arrival was in the lull between the NE blow and the southerly buster. Many hands helped us tie up and we managed to take off the storm jib before going to bed at 0200 local time.