Fridays child is noisy and slow!

A much nicer day today with sun and the kind of cumulus streets that I associate with a nice force 4 on a summers day. Except we don’t have the force 4! The wind is mostly around 4 knots , and frequently blowing straight from Horta , but every so often it pulls round into the SE and increases and we potter along at 4 knots for a while before the engine , bless its cotton socks , has to go on again. The sailing is mostly on the wind , and as for some reason the water is quite lumpy we are set up with huge amounts of twist and fat angles to eke out the best possible speed. The windvane is not happy at these low wind speeds so we have used the autopilot for several days now. It is a remarkable bit of kit and will follow the fluctuating wind wonderfully well . Very sensibly it has been programmed to sound an alarm if the wind changes , and as this happens every few minutes we are constantly scurrying to cancel the alarms. Going to the heads was a bit of an issue as invariably just as you got settled the wretched thing would start its shrill beep beep beeping , until we hit on the idea of taking the remote in with you , thus avoiding being caught short or waking the off watch crew.

If we wait 3 days we might get some wind , but the grib files change daily and I doubt it’s a certainty. The latest fuel audit showed we have enough for 50 hours slow motoring, and the GPS shows 62 hours to go at our present slow speed so fingers crossed for a bit more wind tomorrow.

Oddly enough , despite the anxiously awaited milestones early in the crossing , both Lynda and I really don’t mind how long it takes now as we are completely in to the rhythm of passage making and a day or two here or there seems of no consequence.

At 1300 GMT our position was 38 29N 34 07 W. All well.

Leave a Reply