Wednesday 10th May

Awelina of Sweden
James Collier
Wed 10 May 2017 19:26
30:29.1N, 051:26.0W

The lovely conditions continue, and the wind has increased and veered to F4 from the SSW. This means a broad reach since we’re on 60º which is the great circle course to Horta, still 1220 miles away.

Last night we did eventually put on the engine and ran it for about 15 hours, but turned it off at about 5am and we’re now doing 6 knots or more under sail. The down-side of the broad reach is that the wind self-steering, (a ’Hydrovane’), can’t cope when the apparent wind is less than about 15 knots. We have had to revert to the electric self-steering. This cures our surfeit of electrical power! The plus of having had the engine on is lots of hot water, so the ‘Helio’ portable shower has been filled with lovely warm fresh water. Our first hair-wash showers since leaving St. Lucia, including a hair-wash (luxury). Any more of this and James may have to have a shave.

Minor maintenance tasks continue. The yankee furling line runs through a block on the quarter, and this had become UV damaged and begun to shatter so it has been replaced. The shackle holding it in place was so distorted that it needed an angle grinder to cut if away, so there was much unpacking of tools from deep in lockers. The log impeller (mileometer) stopped working last night. This morning we retrieved it through the hull and it was full of mucous and sticky tentacle-like fibres - did we perhaps hit a dead squid in the dark? The blockage theme has extended to the sinks. Awelina has a double sink, across the beam of the boat. When close hauled on starboard tack we have to block the left hand sink or it fills with backwash from the other sink, not helpful if this is where you are draining the clean dishes. Both sinks were refusing to drain this morning so we filled them with sea water with the plugs in and then opened them whilst using a sink plunger. Lots of black crud appeared then the water gurgled away.

Last night we tried to receive transmissions from Jon on the SSB but while we could just detect that he was there the propagation was too poor to understand each other. It wasn’t just us as Radio France International (on 15 MHz) was silent as well, although the BBC world service broadcast to Nigeria, which is transmitted from Ascension Island on 15.400 MHz, was clear. We’ll continue listening each evening.

Today we changed ship’s time, bringing it forward an hour to GMT - 3. At Longitude 37.5º we’ll bring it forward again. The sun sights are getting more and more convenient every day as we go north, and today’s was rather satisfying giving a sun-run-sun fix around 1pm only 1/2 mile or so different from the GPS.