Saturday. 16 21.78 N. 46 23.75 W.

Alcedo
David Batten
Sat 7 Dec 2013 18:52
Skipper sent yesterday's blog without our Lat and Long, but suffice it to say, we hit the 1000 Mile mark at almost 18.00 precisely. As we were busy changing our sail plan yet again, to mainsail up as the wind has come forward enough to keep it filled, the moment got a bit lost. We have a truly awesome number of bits of string out to play with whenever we do anything with the sails, so keeping the cockpit tidy is a full time job. The only constant at the moment is that we are having to keep the engine on at low revs to keep up any sort of progress and it was good fun last night playing with swell which definitely helped carry us forwards.

This morning we had wind on the beam for a while, so out with the genoa, well both of them actually on the same side, but we still need a little help from the engine. As we have long since given up any idea of being competitive against anything other airplane flight times, we are just doing anything that will keep the boat speed at about 6 knots. Maybe a parasail would have been a good investment!!! Oops, we are actually sailing at 6+ knots at the moment without the iron topsail but there is huge scepticism amongst the crew about how long it will last. 15 minutes is the record to date since we fell into this wind hole some days ago.

(Cont later)

Well it actually lasted over an hour and we have had engine off and on all afternoon.

We put the clocks back another hour this afternoon as we had passed through 45W. Only one more time zone to go.

We should do 150 miles towards our destination in the 24 hours to 6 pm but there is still a lot more to do.

Alcedo

Sent from my iPad