Position: 18 degrees, 52 minutes south; 153 degrees, 07 minutes west 97 nm day (and thanks to Carol on Arnementia for finding my little mistake on yesterday’s position report)

So, if sailing in light air is a delicate dance, sailing in light air on a squally day is like mud wrestling! It’s not very pretty.

In light air you spend a little time balancing all the inputs; jib, main, helm, and windvane and you can achieve a balance that will last for days. Until today, I hadn’t had to touch anything – Charisma was sailing just fine all by herself. But last night the squalls kicked in. Every squall has the same pattern. The wind increases – in this case, from a nice comfortable 10 knots to 20 knots. That part throws everything off balance. You have the big sails up, so you have to furl the jib and/or reef the main. Then the squall lasts 30-45 minutes and once it passes it takes all the wind with it and leaves almost a vacuum. Nothing. Charisma just wallows with no wind to guide her. That part usually last another half hour where you have to go to the helm and try to just keep the boat from spinning in aimless circles using the very small amount of boat speed you might have – maybe 0.5 knots or less – for rudder input. Then the wind fills back in. Now you unfurl the jib and/or unreef the main and go through all the little adjustments to rebalance everything hoping this time will be the last.

Once everything is set and you think you can go get some sleep you look up and see the next squall just upwind, and you know you’re going to do it all over again.

By the way, Ann now belongs to the “On the bowsprit when it goes underwater” club. She was out on the tippy end feeding the jib into the slot when we went up, up, up and big wave and came down, down down and the bowsprit and Ann were christened by the Southern Ocean.