Motor, Sail, Motor-Sail...doing it all

Wallace's Sailing Adventure on "Arbella"
Mike and Vicki Wallace
Wed 6 Nov 2013 04:49
26:03.1N 61:43.1W It's ALL ABOUT THE WIND!! The ocean s out here can be
ferocious....but a day later, they can be docile. In the past 24 hours, as
we stay focused on the fuel situation, there have been times when the wind
gave us some good lift, but them times when it died, with lots of rain
squalls coming and going. For a good bit of the day, we had all sails up
with the engine off and were making nearly 9 knots. But then, 6 hours
later, we needed to shorten flopping sails and run the engine to keep us
going....and later still, the wind came around to "on the nose", so we
brought in all sails and motored. The thought of getting within 10 miles of
Tortola and running out of fuel has crossed our minds! But we will not let
that happen. We will keep that last 50-70 litters for emergency propulsion
and running the generator . Basically, we need to be able to sail for about
190 miles, with 480 miles to go! In the extreme case that we run out of
wind and run out of fuel, the captain has declared that we will break out
the Dark and Stormy's! Captain Mike