Atlantic crossing day 14

S/V Goldcrest
David & Lindsay Inwood
Sun 31 May 2015 12:18

39:58.7N 42:13.1W @1200 GMT 513 miles to go.

 

Our slow drift continues, only 89nm nearer Flores in the last 24 hours…  We’ve managed to keep the boat sailing in record light winds – down to 7kts last night.  Below that the sails flail around in the swell more than they give us any drive, so the autopilot fails to keep us going in any sensible direction.  We are down to fuel for just 3 days slow motoring, assuming the tank holds what it should.  The good news is that the last forecast showed a sailable wind coming in 2 days time.  Nonetheless, we drift slowly with the engine off every moment we can.  We count ourselves lucky that over the last 3 days or so there has been almost no wind forecast, yet somehow we manage to “sail” for nearly 2/3rds the time.

 

We’ve been favoured with dolphins a fair bit in the last 2 days.  They seem to crave attention because if you go to the bows and watch them, they stay and get others to join them.  Fail to go forward and they quickly lose interest and bound away.  This morning we had bow riders and a pod leaping into the air a few hundred metres behind us.  Lindsay also saw a whale blowing, lucky thing.