Well, yesterday afternoon we were rolling a little too much for the strength of wind so the main was backing and filling so we stowed it to save wear, and ran on the genoa, poled out to leeward which worked fine but wasn’t as fast as we had been going. After an hour or two Alastair wasn’t happy with this so after a bit of persuasion we put the main up again and ran on that for a few hours, to be fair it wasn’t backing and filling then but, inevitably, at sunset the wind died a little and we ended up just on the Genoa, poled out overnight; but not doing badly at 5-6 knots.
This morning we had a lovely wind initially and put up the main to port with the genoa goosewinged to starboard, and around coffee time put up the main and assymetric with the Genoa stowed.
We are now doing about 5-7 knots with full main and assymetric in 10-15 knots of wind from the NNE. If we’re lucky we may avoid a light wind area tomorrow before establishing in the trades proper around Tuesday / Wednesday.
The assymetric comes in a snuffer and has been getting tangled up in it which is boring, I think I bought too big a snuffer for the size of the sail that I have.
Stephen has been working away with his sextant taking sights when possible and is getting more familiar with the concepts but so far has not managed to get an actual morning sight and then meridional passage because the sun has disappeared or been hidden behind the sails at the opportune moment. He successfully crossed a morning sight with an afternoon one a couple of days ago and now knows when to apply which d correction to what. Hopefully today could be the day for a morning sight followed by noon latitude ( position lines from a sextant are at right angles to the heavenly body so a sight at noon, when the sun is due North, or in our case South of us therefore gives a Latitude, and the Noon latitude is a very simple calculation, one just works the sextant angle into a true altitude, takes this from 90 degrees and then either adds or subtracts the declination to get the right answer)
The vegetables and salads are, inevitably, not lasting as well as they did on the way to the Canaries when it didn’t matter so much. The carrots which, unfortunately, ended up in the vegetable hammock rather than the fridge had to be offered up to the sea gods this morning because Stephen thought that the smell from them might make them a little unappetising and we ended up washing and drying some potatoes too that had been varnished with rotting carrot juice.
Stephen converted his bolognese sauce from Friday night into a good chilli yesterday which we had with some salad, which needed eating. I think tonight it’ll be a veggie meal with peppers and mushrooms which also need eating, although now I come to think of it I may end up making a rice muck do - a family recipe of fried rice and anything else which comes to hand.
I stripped the pump that failed yesterday down and was expecting to find a hole in the diaphragm, however I didn’t so now think that the joint between the motor and the pump may just have come, loose, I’ll test it sometime and may ask someone to bring out a service kit for it if it is still leaking.
We put the clocks back an hour at noon today so have 25 hours to run, noon today to noon tomorrow.
Distance made good today was 114 miles a little lower than I’d hoped.
Slainte
Jock and all.
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