Position at 19.00 UTC: 005 degrees, 44 minutes north, 080 degrees, 14 minutes west
As promised, the wind returned yesterday evening so, after about 4 hours' motoring, we hoisted the Yeo Valley Parasailor spinnaker again and had some brilliant downwind sailing. Our experience of crossing the Atlantic was that, even with a crew of 4, getting the sail down if the wind increases above 23 knots is challenging so we watched the windspeed indicator closely. Sure enough, it built to 22 knots so we took the Parasailor down just as it was getting dark (though a full moon provided good illumination) – it was certainly challenging with just the two of us but was accomplished safely. Back to white sails, with the yankee poled out, we were still making around 7.5 knots, with an additional knot of helpful current pushing us SSW. As the night progressed the waves built a bit so it was another of those tricky-to-sleep first nights at sea.
Today the wind is dropping as predicted so we're just trying to pick a good line through the calm bits. Stormvogel is, as ever, less than a mile away and there are three other boats we know about a day ahead of us. The twice-daily chats on the SSB radio are a nice diversion from the on board routines and yesterday we refilled our freshwater tanks with the on-board watermaker so a cool shower in the cockpit was very refreshing before lunch. The simple things mean a lot!
No comments:
Post a Comment