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!