Island Kea II - 4th day at sea

Island Kea II
Steve and Katrin Everett
Wed 28 Nov 2007 12:16
Position as at 12 noon UTC 28th of November
24:12.36N 20:57.55W
Currently doing 6.3 kts with head sail poled out and main with a preventer in a goosewing
The parasailor went up yesterday but only for a while as the wind died down and there was a real risk of getting it wrapped round the spreaders.
The wind died down completely about 6pm yesterday, so we had to motor for a few hours.
We have had two problems.  First is the ship compass is sticking so unusable, but Steve has got round the problem by fitting it back to front so it is now usable.
The more serious one is that the autopilot has decided not to work any more, it died early in my watch last night.  So we are now steering by hand which is hard work.
Steve and Tom will have a look today, but this involves completely emptying an aft locker and then hanging upside down through a small hole to take a look.  Hopfullly something can be done but if not the rest of the crossing will be a lot harder than we planned but we should turn up at the other end with large muscles. 
The weather is getting warmer now and bikini's are definetely coming out.  We seem to be going a lot further south than most other yacht on the ARC, I just hope it pays off. 
We did not see a single yacht/ship last night but this morning we saw one yacht in the distance, which may or may not be on the ARC.
Well so far so good overall - just hope for good winds from the right direction..    Katrin