Official Jessica Watson Blog

We've had lots of good progress in the last few days but not towards Australia, we've been headed north again to avoid the worst of a passing front, it's safely past now but did give us and is still giving us some pretty big seas with some of the bigger ones reaching maybe 7 metres. Mostly Ella's Pink Lady takes it all in her stride as always but the occasional breaking wave is a little hard on my nerves and makes for some pretty bouncy sailing.

When the wind started easing a little this morning, I finely put my head down for a few minutes sleep and must have been pretty tired because I slept through my ear splittingly loud alarm (well that's a bit of an exaggeration! After all my head is still in one piece but believe me it's very loud) and didn't wake up till over an hour later to find that Ella's Pink Lady was rounded up into the wind (pointing into the wind) and drifting off course, one of the bigger waves must have snapped the windvane blade while I was sleeping and without it, Parker wasn't able to keep us sailing in the right direction. Luckily I've still got a few spares so it was a nice easy fix.

Most of the time getting plenty of sleep isn't too much of problem even if it is only in short amounts. Normally I wake up a least once an hour to glance at the instruments and check on everything, but when you add a bit of strong wind, any sort of un-stable weather or approaching land it sometimes gets a bit hard to catch up again. I always know when I'm getting a bit run down because I start getting a tickly throat just like you do before getting a cold but seeing as there aren't any germs out here I never do actually get the cold which is definitely a plus!

When the sun came out today, the whole cabin was steaming as all my wet weather gear and everything dried out. The wind and waves are still pretty big and strong through the day. Just hanging on has been enough to keep me busy.

So it's same old same old out here. I'm sure there's still plenty more weather to deal with and there's a lot of miles to cover yet but I can't help thinking about getting home more and more, kinda strangely the closer to Australia I get, the more I'm missing everyone. I'm already getting excited but just a tad nervous too! Did I mention how much I'm looking forward to going for a walk!

It's dark again now and there's enough light from the full moon to see the white tops of the bigger waves, feeling Ella's Pink Lady take off down the bigger ones is something I'll never get bored of.

Jesse