30th November update
Fleck
Thu 30 Nov 2006 12:43
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Hello everyone,
No entry on our site yesterday as we wrote
seperately to the WAG'S (world cup jargon)
Everything is going well here, although there is
not very much wind today, it is however gloriously warm and sunny.
Noon position: 23.08N, 20.29W
This puts us at our first waypoint: the point at
which we intended to turn due west for the Carribean. However that way just now
seems to have very light winds indeed, and we may go a little further south
still. The master tactician is in the cockpit as I write, getting the positions
of surrounding boats with SSB radios. Later we will also download the fleet
positions, the weather forecasts (ARC official, Kinver version!, and a grib file
from mailasail), and decide what to do. However as we are more or less becalmed
at present it doesn't really matter which direction we point the
boat!!
We are both on our advanced domestic training
course, and will return perfect househusbands, although with a very minimasist
approach. Our towed generator produces enough electricity to power a 60 watt
light bulb, so long as the boat is moving at a fair speed. With this we have to
power our navigation light (an LED, thank goodness) this computer, our
watermaker, and whenever there is anything left over, the fridge. As it is dark
for 12 hours a day we also have to power up the halogen cabin lights.On days
when there is no wind, and therfore no speed, we have to run the engine to get a
big dollop of amps to put in our batteries from the engines alternator. So far
all of this has worked out more or less as I had intended, and if our watermaker
keeps going, we should have enough water to wash ourselves and some clothes:
this latter activity consumes a lot of water that I hadn't really factored in.
Sorry for the technical stuff. Yesterday we made
some great bread, will find out in an hour what the remains taste like 24 hrs
later!
You would be correct to assume that at this stage
we have seen no exciting animals, neither have we caught any fish. You will be
the first to hear however!!
Richard and Geoff
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