COG 300T

SOG 6.5kts+

Wind F4 E

This is wonderful passage making. We are flying along so smoothly that within the saloon you would think we are at anchor! I came up into the cockpit last night thinking we would need to start the engine only to find Annie contentedly reading while Vega was making over five knots.

Earlier this morning the wind was stronger but we weren’t exceeding five knots. It just felt wrong. We looked over the stern and there was a mass of Sargasso weed wrapped around the Hydrovane rudder. I couldn’t prise it off with the boat hook but discovered that by turning into the wind and reducing speed it would all fall away, together with massive clumps coming from under the boat that had presumably caught around the main rudder. Our speed immediately shot up to seven knots! The difference between 5kts and 6kts boat speed on the remainder of this passage at 24nm a day represents almost two days at sea, so it is well worth clearing the weed on a regular basis!

This Sargasso weed is remarkable. Areas of the sea that we sail through are blanketed by rafts of it. Our friend Henry on Ceres, still out here but now behind us even though not stopping at Fernando, snorkled in it recently and found lots of life beneath the weed. Some was small and some “not so small”. I must ask him what he means by that. Apparently the increase in the amount of weed is to do with the Atlantic getting warmer. Colin on Endorphin tells me that they had to remove 60 lorry loads of the stuff from the beach next to his anchorage in Barbados. Now, if there is life being supported under this weed maybe it is a new floating ecosystem, rather like the ones that have developed under the islands of floating plastic waste. My thought is that maybe this sargasso weed could be cultivated for protein and create ecosystem benefits at the same time. I know the Dutch are looking at seaweed in principle and maybe it’s not such a bad idea.