Across the Pond - Day 3

Jackamy
Paul & Derry Harper
Fri 20 Nov 2009 09:00

26:12.059N 17:27.257W

 

Thursday 19th November



We had an uncomfortable night last night. The Atlantic sea is as confused as the Mediterranean. There are big swells and because we are sailing downwind the boat rolls from side to side. It seems to be so much worse of a night time but I think it's because you can't see the waves coming to brace yourself. Some of us aren't happy with this motion but unfortunately there isn't much we can do about it. I think Amy wanted to jump ship as we sailed passed Gran Canaria. She was trying to figure out if she would make it swimming to shore!

We believe the trade winds have kicked in because we've got good winds pushing us along. But also apparently small, isolated cumuli clouds looking like the out pourings of a steam train are meant to be sure signs of the Trades and we're surrounded by them.

We've been experimenting with different sail systems but at the moment we are flying the genoa poled out to port and the head sail poled out to starboard. It seems to be working well and we're sailing along at 8-9 knots. Our maximum speed so far is 10.2 kts and of course we're trying to beat it, so far today we've had 10 kts.

Early evening we saw a yacht on the horizon and with AIS we were able to identify it as a 97ft yacht called Varsovie that was heading for Cape Verde. They passed very close to our stern and we all exchanged a wave.

We're settling in to our watches nicely. We've decided to do 4 hrs on 4 hrs off. Paul H and Amy are together and me and Paul B are together. We work it so that in the four hours we're on watch one of us sleeps for the first 2 hours and then the other for the next to. We've decided to do it like this because when we start experiencing squalls we'll need two people on deck to bring the sails in. It seems to be working well.

 


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