03:49.557'S 89:12.833'W A very grey day!

Hamble Warrior
Jamie Hickman
Thu 6 Apr 2023 22:04

Day 16

Managed to keep sailing through the night although the south-westerly wind coupled with a north-east flowing current pushed us south east; away from where we hope to find the trade winds.

Jamie downloaded the weather GRIBS early to see what we could expect over the coming days. He concluded that we could afford to carry on as we are for a little longer and IF we needed to use the engine to push ourselves a little west we could wait until the weekend to do so. We hope not to but equally if using the engine for 50 miles or so means we find the trade winds it will have been worth it. If we miss them and are becalmed for another week we would kick ourselves for not using what we have available to us. We still hope not to need to do this. We would love to be able to cross the Pacific without turning the engine on once; the same as we managed in the Atlantic.

We managed to find 4 good eggs for breakfast and threw 3 more rotters overboard - keeping the ratio in favour of good, so that's something!

Shortly after breakfast we had our first squall of the day and that set the tone for the rest of the day really. It has been cloudy and overcast all day with squall after squall coming through. We washed and collected enough rainwater to refill all our cans during the first squall. Then between squalls I managed to do a little laundry; not that we are creating much laundry on this trip! Before I could dry it all we had another squall through and everything took another drenching. The winds increased with the squalls and never died away again so we have been making good miles; better still we are kind of heading in the right direction; making south in west-south-westerly winds of about 20kts. It's pretty grim though. We are sailing upwind so the least comfortable point of sail. Everything; including us, is drenched. There is no sun to dry anything out and it's a grey miserable old day. I have finally changed my sodden swimming costume for some dry bikini bottoms and my sailing jacket and I hadn't realised how much being wet was bringing my mood down. Now I am warm and dry I am ever so slightly less of a miserable bitch; but still quite a miserable bitch. Captain is quite happy as we are heading in the right direction (ish) and making some miles. Meep is absolutely delighted because this foul weather has brought him the gift of flying fish! He knew one had landed on deck in the small hours of the morning and from his little spot under the dinghy he made a huge fuss until Jamie went and retrieved it for him. So he knows he has flying fish for dinner and is a very happy cat. I think our own dinner plans will be shelved for calmer conditions - we might just open a tin of something tonight.

Yesterday's emails made us smile; we loved getting news from Claire that we had messages on my Facebook page and she kindly sent us them all which made us smile so much. We also received an email from our friends who set off on the same day as us giving us their progress report which gave us a bit of a boost too.

Hopefully we manage to upload this post and download any mail if the conditions allow.

Our 5pm to 5pm daily run is a whopping 82nm. So that's something to be positive about!

Are we nearly there yet? I need a fucking drink!