A misty morning. A sunny afternoon.
A day of smooth, slow sailing in calm weather. The seas are calm, just a light breeze blows. The ship smoothly sails at a slow speed on an easterly course, waiting for the upcoming forecasted wind to pick up with us.
We ran out of wind during the night as Tristan da Cunha falls behind us, with its high mountain and land effects over the generally quiet windfield.
On this course and at this leisurely pace, the island is still visible in the evening, just over 60 nm away. Great visibility after the foggy morning. With the winds dying down and the humid air becoming more tranquil, fog grew. And a dense low layer atop the ocean it was.
But as the sun rises and peers behind the misty veil, it starts dispersing, not before offering us the sight of a white rainbow over the sea surface. Known as a fogbow, it is similar in some respects to a traditional rainbow. But here the sunlight interacts with water droplets that are much tinier than raindrops, with a size between 0.05 and 0.1 mm. These micro-droplets cause the light to undergo different physical processes, most notably diffraction, which leads to fogbows appearing to be devoid of colour. It was also announcing the start of a sunny rest of the morning.
The good weather and tranquil sailing made for a day of maintenance aboard and a good chance to prepare the ship for the long sailing stretch ahead of us.
Not needed anymore for this trip, the trustworthy rubber boats that have been shuttling us back and forth from ship to shore in Antarctica, South Georgia, and Tristan da Cunha can now be cleaned and packed away, their engines stowed. That leaves the Sloop deck clear for easier sail handling.
About 2000 nm of open ocean to Namibia. A long way to plan a routing amongst High and Low Pressure Systems, westerlies, trade winds, west wind drift, and Benguela currents.
