14:35 N 59:45 W

 

In daylight onwards we had winds of 17 down to 8 and rain with wind in between. Before, I would do 300 degrees and now gone down to 210 without me touching anything. A lot of wind backing. When it is wall to wall grey it is lovely and cool, the moment a bit of blue comes out it is very very hot.

 

I have been watching the moon all the time, when it is overhead and the sky is clear it is like daylight. I videod the moon early in the morning and it had a red tinge.

 

Sargasso, is this what I am seeing during the last week? Floating weeds everywhere streaming along...

 

I thought as a last day do a bit of fishing and instead I caught a booby. Last time one of them tried to pick the lure I pulled hard and he missed and made noises to stop him from future attempts. I stopped fishing then. But this morning the young one was already hooked somewhere. Pulled him closer in, I could not see the line let alone where he was hooked so I cut the line he flew away and I gave up fishing.

 

At 70 NM out I saw a bit of land above the clouds. North part of Martinique has a mountain 4800 ft high. Everything is misty and cloudy in the west. It looks more rain to come too.

 

Twice I had to check AIS alarms, and twice I had to put the engine on to charge the battery as I had switched the wind generator and solar panels to charge the under sink battery so that I could listen to some music.

 

The Furuno SSB  I have not touched since 2014, it is on the boat, the Azores Challenge put a stop to its use. This time south of the Canaries I used to SSB radio with the Notebook but did not have any luck. Found it easier to ask passing ships to give me the weather forecast. So now anything that would have to use battery power is a no no. I have a piece of paper stuck by the instruments panel with frequencies and times and particularly with the Falmouth Coast Guard’s telephone number. This was in case I was attacked by African Pirates, as apparently they use fast launches to catch unawares yachties sailing by.

 

Water, I took 150 litres with me, I think I probably used only a fifth of that. Luckily we did not have any prolonged calms of say a week at a time, or for that matter an unfortunate dismasting when it would have necessitated jury rig and long passage time. That’s  where the emergency water comes in. I was hoping to have a wash today by using this extra 25 litres of water, but alas it is raining yet again. But I had my usage of wash wipes today.