Sunday afternoon update 7th June

Catmojo
Matt
Sun 7 Jun 2020 16:34
29:09N 41:40W at 1600UTC 1pm local cog 355 in wind f3-4 ENE moving E, sog 8-9 kts ... dropping to 7kts as I write this but moving to 5cog.

Simon Says he actually likes getting messages from us, and needs to know more about our scrapping away to get eastwards. With NE wind we could sometimes make 100 or even 90 cog, but as the wind veered (turned clockwise from our point of view) it fell away to 130+ and made sense to tack north like Simon Said. I set the wind angle thing at an optimistic 43degrees against the wind and see how it goes. Sometimes we see 345 cog, other times it tightens all the way up to 360/0 degrees.

Other boat bits all okay. The new water heater tanks are functioning fine but need connecting to 220V - at the moment there's hot water only if we run the engine for the relevant side of the boat. The new lower-tech 24V Eco-Tech watermaker also working fine,50litres an hour and doesn't need the engine. Solar shows net charging of 25amps in sunshine with all fridges and nav taking up to 15amps - at night time there's no charging except with engines.

The crew are watching a Nice Film on TV - Fool's Gold as the boat creaks and crashes along. No, we don't watch film very much - this is only the second film we've played but Sunday innit?

Ampi's family are wondering Are We Nearly There Yet? St Martin starting point is 1350 nautical miles back, Lanzarote southern coast 1450nm ahead, so we're perhaps almost half-way through the trip, and still have half the fuel. The boat is faster under sail of course, but not necessarily in the right direction. I guessed around 3 weeks but less than 4 weeks and that's still on target.

It sounds like my picture sending may have worked to the blog, although I thought it gave an error message and gave up? Weird.

Snooze for me for an hour, then I might think about reefing the main overnight - I think it can point better and I don't want to end up in the wrong bit of the sea for the lovely wind from north and west, hopefully due next week, which might take us all the way to Lanzarote