Whoops ! (but position now added)
Blue Sky's Voyage
George & Michael
Wed 6 Dec 2006 12:57
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Hello Friends
"21:00.98N 40:20.26W"
Antigua 1230 miles away.
OK, so I forgot to put the coordinates into
yesterday's blog - hands up all those bloggers who thought we were lost! I
started the blog in the morning before I had the position - that's my
excuse.
The weather has settled again, the warm
sector has passed and the squalls with it, we all had a bit of a bath as several
squalls passed over us. Now it has cleared up we have the spinnaker set again
and we're managing about 7 knots with a bit of current on top of
that.
Here's a pic of Arthur (aka Barny) our
resident photographer, getting a shot of the bow wave as we surf.
 You may wonder how we manager our power
reserves on board. We have a couple of solar panels which are supposed to
generate about 7 or 8 amps in the middle of the day, a wind generator, which
doesn't do much when you're sailing downwind but which will be great at anchor
in the Caribbean when it can generate more than 30 amps. Our mainstay on the
crossing is the towed generator...
 which we fixed low down on the transom
(better angle on the water) and which has a weighted turbine towed 20 metres
behind. This one's an Aquagen and it's OK but the towing line does get rather
knotted and would be better if it were cable or something a little more robust.
With all of that it still isn't quite enough, so we are running the engine for a
couple of hours each day just to top up the batteries.
As you've noticed, we've passed 40 degrees
west, so we'll have another hour time change this evening - which obviously
means an extra long Happy Hour.
Best Wishes
George, Michael and the crew
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