Saturday 30May Mojo blog day 4
Catmojo
Matt
Sat 30 May 2020 12:43
I'm sorry if lack of blogs has caused concern; it seems that I broke or changed something on the computer or perhaps pressed the wrong buttons to make sending emails a problem. Ace crew Sam messaged with a sailing+tech of mine friend James in UK. If you're reading this, they sorted it. We still had a functioning satellite phone of course, and a spare one too - it was just the emailing thing.
Crew Sam, Ampi and Anna joined the boat within less than a week of sailing, so there was some apprehension from them and especially their friends and family. No need.
To answer some concerns, I can report no 100foot waves and although it has rained a few times, the rest of us laughed as Sam tried to catch video of "the storm" and the showers have lasted under 20minutes each. We have 2 metre swell, and the boat is gently rocking along, the awkward motion being something like sitting on a camel. We're all getting used to it, plenty of sleep, a bit queasy now and again, but nobody seasick.
We are motoring with sails down in the light winds of under 5kts from the NE, and our UK-based friendly forecaster Simon Says it's like this at least for the next few days yet.
We're tracking a waypoint 1350miles and maybe 9-10 days away at this rate, at Madeira's latitude 32N and longitude 35W on track line from St Martin towards Lisbon as initially suggested by long-term forecaster Mike on Quinn, then turning towards Lanzarote from that waypoint.
We use one motor at a time at around 2250rpm for maximum range, and the Yanmar 4JHTE 75hp motors use around 100 litres of fuel a day. I'm refilling every 24hrs to monitor fuel closely, and this may be the deciding factor in choosing to press on to Lanzarote direct from the waypoint, or side-stepping the shorter distance to Horta, Azores for yet more fuel on top of the 1750 litres with which we started.
Almost no other ships or boats seen yet, although we had dolphins join us briefly on day one. There may be some big-ship action around 1100 miles ahead when our route intersects the direct route taken by cargo ships running between Gibraltar and Panama via the channel between Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic. We'll see.
Anna is determined to catch a fish, and although she's hooked three they all got away, darnit.
Sam is wondering who has messaged him that they're rescheduling a wedding - he knows several due in August - we love getting messages but please sign them...
Ampi's parents in Argentina are openly green with envy - their long-term sailing plan was get all their sail training and MAYBE sail the Atlantic one day - but Ampi is doing it right now with almost no notice at all.
Yes, my blogs are often a bit more of a zany laugh than this, but I thought that it might be an idea to keep it fairly sensible today; three crew hopped on to the boat with almost no notice, two with essentially zero sailing experience... we charged off over the Atlantic, and nothing heard for a few days. I hope you can see that I do actually know what I'm doing (apart from the emailing or actually catching fish) and as many times before, it will all be fine. Apparently the same applies to the earlier individual wild adventures of this crew as well.