Day 5 Sunday
Catmojo
Matt
Sun 31 May 2020 12:46
Saturday we had breakfast and then to the serious business of sailing the boat. Hah! Not really. We managed to motorsail for half an hour in the morning as a flimsy 8knot breeze made it worth ripping out the foresail for twenty minutes. Slow afternoon in almost zero knots and lumpy calm seas, but then late afternoon a 6 knot breeze from the SE let us motorsail at over 7 knots through to midnight. Yes,I suppose we could just wait for wind and no motoring, but that might be quite a long wait, and we don't have enough patience to tootle along at under 3knots or Just Sit There.
Thus the crew have turned their hand to other things. Ampi made fab pancakes for breakfast, fajitas for lunch. Anna hunts a fish with murderous intent. Sam does video blogs. It's a good team.
In the morning and a fair bit of the afternoon we played Nurdle Drurdle, a foolish card game for 2+ players. 7 cards each, follow suit or number, various cards mean another go, reverse direction and so on and the winner is first to play all their cards. Penalty cards are given for playing out of turn, or too slowly. In lots of ways, Nurdle Drurdle is the best and silliest card game, yet needs intelligence and resilience - it's mostly about dishing out (and accepting) on-the-spot penalties. Ampi showed her ambitions by finding pen and paper to keep score, and the increasingly competitive games resulted in Anna eventually cursing herself for going anywhere NEAR that beach in St Martin and meeting the other two last week, but not too seriously haha.
Sunday morning now and every day is Diesel Day - I refill the main 600litre tank. We've used around 400litres in the first (almost) 600 miles which is an excellent performance for a powerboat, but rather poor for the sailing variety. This early part of the trip to Horta from the Caribbean is usually the proper sailing bit, and only later is the fuel needed. But we're around a quarter of the way to Horta and a quarter of the way through the fuel, so meh, whatever.
Lovely sunny Sunday morning albeit with 9knots apparent wind at 15degrees and 5.7knots sog with an engine rumbling. Hm.