Ascension Island to the Azores Day 3 - A more or less empty sea

Caduceus
Martin and Elizabeth Bevan
Wed 22 Feb 2017 05:19

Position                    04:27.89 S 018:49.85 W

Date                          2359 (UTC) Tuesday 21 February 2017

Distance run             in 24hrs 128nm over the ground, 117nm through the water

Passage total            341nm over the ground, 325nm through the water

Distance to go          3,332nm

Planned distance      Ascension to the Azores west around the high 3,666nm

 

There is not much to see out here, I saw one Taiwan fishing vessel on AIS early this morning but the CPA (Closest Point of Approach) was 18nm.   In the afternoon I had a visual sighting at 8nm of a Norwegian tanker enroute from the direction of Nigeria and heading for Brazil. It is interesting to think that the route that we are taking is similar to the route taken by commercial sail in the 19th century, returning to the Mediterranean and Northern Europe having rounded Cape Horn. Few ships have any modern commercial reason to be out here going up the middle unless we cross a direct route between major centres.

 

Elizabeth is using the calm seas as an opportunity to preserve the pre-prepared meals for when the going gets rougher so tonight produced some excellent enchiladas.  For my part I changed the oil and filters in the generator to see if that would help the oil pressure warning problem.  It did not so my money is on the oil pressure sensor. Son Andrew, in Texas, has been doing great work on research with Onan but so far there is no magic solution.