Thursday 18th May
Awelina of Sweden
James Collier
Thu 18 May 2017 14:48
The wind has now veered as forecast and we’re bowling along on a reach, going between 7 and 8 knots, and have 140 miles to go. In principle less than 24 hours, but lots can change so we’re not getting our hopes too high for Friday night in port. Although the beer will run out on Friday lunchtime, so motivation is high!
Today we discovered that the last 4-pack of loo rolls was in fact a 2-pack of kitchen paper, so we’ll be quite glad to make port before too long! On the plus side there turned out to be an extra 4 pots of yogurt in the bottom of the fridge, and the cabbage, potatoes, onions, garlic and yams are lasting well. We are however craving a decent night’s sleep without starboard tack being involved! Marmite is still available (Thanks Mike) and the coffee from Dominica should last another three weeks. All the boat essentials.
The GPS has started playing up, it seems the date has wrapped somehow, a sort of delayed Y2K problem perhaps, and it thinks it’s the 85th of January 1985. To add to the electronic / software bugs the speedometer decided to change units to kph whereas it had been in knots. It chose 3am to do this, so James took a few minutes to twig why the speed seemed to have climbed to 12.3 - faster than Awelina’s ever gone if in knots! But consulting the manual by torchlight and doing the magic incantations for factory reset seems to have worked. It took 3C off the water temperature at the same time, which felt about right as it was freezing! But probably needs new calibrations done when there’s another thermometer handy.
Talking of thermometers and temperature its cold (for us) as we head north. Cabin temperature was 19 degrees last night which finds us in our thermals and breaking out a duvet to sleep under. The suntans are fading fast. However on the plus side the lovely long sunsets and twilight are fascinating having been in the “dark after 6pm” tropic zone. Dawn is getting earlier and earlier as well. The joys of a northern summer await.