Friday morning in the Atlantic.
Jigsaw
Fri 7 Dec 2007 12:13
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All goes well! 24.44 N 21.29W, at 10:00 on
7.12.07, course of about 240 and speed around 6 knots.
Reading is the order of the day today, everybody
has their noses in books so boat is calm and relaxed as we bowl down the rhumb
line towards our first waypoint, done nearly 400 miles so far, (which is
about 14% of the total so we are eating the elephant!!). Mental health
is in decline though, Ian was talking to dolphins last night whilst on
watch, and I discovered a new constellation of stars, in the form of a
sardine, will look for one that is shaped like aoli tonight!
Boat is looking after us well and will do the
rounds in a while to check for chafe and anything coming loose that needs
attention (before it falls apart). The Hydrovane self steering is doing a
fantastic job of helming the boat, we have hardly touched the wheel, or the
sails, for the last couple of days. Once it is set up on the point of
sail that you want, in relation to the wind direction, it will maintain that
angle to the wind for as long as you wish. The Hydrovane also uses no
electricity and drinks no beer. We have been very fortunate in that
the wind has changed direction, starting in the NNE and coming round to the ENE
and now towards E just as we have wanted it to, so the sail setting that we did
on Wedsnesday has taken us about 350 miles.
Just caught our first fish, a Dorado weighing about
1.1kg, that has aqlready yealded a fine sushi lunch for me, nobody else wanted
raw tuna with rice and soya sauce. Very tasty! Will cook the rest for tea later.
We cannot update the Sailblogs Blog from sea, but
these emails are going on to our mailasail blog at http://blog.mailasail.com/jigsaw which
hopefully also has our position on google earth, the ARC website has hopefully
caught up with the fact that we are under way too.
Thanks for all the emails of support while we were
getting over the trauma of our first departure.
Paul.
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