22.49.37N 18.57.71W
JENNY
Alan Franklin/ Lynne Gane
Wed 21 Nov 2007 12:23
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Last night was amazing the ocean put on a display
of pyrotechnics both with forked lightening and in the sea with
millions of microscopic creatures lighting up our wake in Blue and green right
down the length of the boat and forming large clusters at the
stern.
I spent my time dodging the rain clouds which show
up clearly on the radar and you can track them from 20nm away .Its not the rain
that we mind after all that makes a change out here its the lightning and the
squalls that come with it.
We are waiting with baited breath for the trades to
kick in as at the moment all the wind is on our nose which means we either go
off course to sail (we can only sail effectively at 45 degrees to the wind) and
take a much longer route or we motor sail using our limited supply of fuel ,if
we use to much the we would have to put in to the Cap Verde islands which may
add 350/400 nm to our course or 2/3 days sailing time depending on the wind of
course.As I have said before the trades are the winds which blow in the north to
eastern sector to blow us across the Atlantic.
In the days of old the saying for the square
riggers was 'sail south until the butter melts' this tended to put you somewhere
near the north of the Cap Verde islands around 18/20 degrees north of the
equator.We are going (wind permitting) to sail a 20/30 route which is the middle route of about 2,880nm.
Today our main task is to set up the Tiller Pilot
which we attach to our Wind Pilot which is our secondary means of steering
automatically ,by using this it uses less electricity than the main auto pilot
and in fact the Wind Pilot itself uses no electricity as its name implies it is
wind powered.But of course we need some wind to make it work.You can never trust
systems on yachts because at some time they are going to play up,some we can fix
others we can't so there is a lot of duplication on the boat relying on the
'just in case' principle.
At the moment its no wind therefore conserving fuel
is a priority just in case we need to use the engine on our passage to get out
of the way of bad weather,in a few days time we may have too much wind or not
enough.We also need fuel to charge our batteries to keep all of the systems
working its is really one big management of resources which we are constantly
aware of after all 22+ days is a long time at sea in an environment over which
you have no control.
Having said that we are here to see the world from
a different perspective than that of a plane and have an adventure that will
stay with us for the rest of our lives.
Now what are we going to have for dinner tonight
decisions decisions.
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