Noon Position: 33:11.415N
015:40.185W
Date & time: 11 October
2009 1300
hrs
Distance covered since noon yesterday: 155
Another perfect day’s sailing.
Now with the Force 5 or 6 wind directly behind us we have been bowling along at
about 7 knots with the mainsail strapped out on one side and the yankee (the big
sail at the front of the boat) held out on the other side by the spinnaker
pole.
Last night we saw the twinkle of
the masthead lights of two other yachts lifting above the horizon many miles in
front of us. As the day progressed we slowly but surely overhauled the first
one, and during last night we hauled in and overtook the second yacht. As we
never got close enough to see their hulls, whilst for all we know they may have
been dinghy-sized, psychologically it is much, much better to be the overtaking
vessel than the overtaken.
And talking of being overtaken,
yesterday afternoon we saw the dark shape of a very large hull bearing down on
us from astern and the AIS “radar” indicated that it was heading straight for us
at 18 knots. Normally I have a policy of avoiding commercial traffic, whatever
the rule book might say about power giving way to sail, on the grounds that a)
they are making a living, whilst I am out here for the sheer fun of it, b) I
understand that a large ship altering course uses about a ton of extra fuel and,
not least, c) they are capable of smashing us into very small bits. I called the
ship on the VHF radio, explaining we had restricted manoeuvrability due to our
poled out sails and he obligingly altered course to starboard to give us plenty
of room. He still looked jolly big as he forged past us less than half a mile
away. As the whole incident from first sighting to his passing us took less than
20 minutes, it was a salutary reminder to all the crew that very regular 360°
sweeps of the horizon are essential.
We have been sailing in well over
4000m of water and last night we sailed straight over Monte Seine. This 2 ½ mile
high volcanic mountain rises almost vertically from the seabed, its peak lying
just 150 metres below the surface of the sea. As
Adrian said “Just like
Madeira really, except Madeira
went just that little bit further”.
In the afternoon,
Adrian announced that he would be
cooking dinner that evening. Lawrence and I waited in nervous anticipation,
listening to the furious activity in the galley below and, eventually, presented
before us was Adrian’s first meal
cooked in nearly 50 years. Oven-baked breast of organic chicken in an onion and
orange jus, presented with boiled potatoes and succulent asparagus spears, it
would have won him a place in the semi-finals of Masterchef. It was a triumph! Jeanette will be very
proud of him and will doubtless be expecting
Adrian to make a considerably
greater contribution in the kitchen in the future, now his hidden talents have
been revealed.
The only blot on the landscape is
that our wonderful but overly-complicated Whispergen generator, which has worked
perfectly for 2 ½ years, has packed up. Entirely coincidentally, I’m sure, it
had an extortionately expensive service four days ago. So we have decided to
anchor for the night off Porto Santo about 30-miles northeast of
Madeira where we should have phone and email signals so
we can sort it out with the WG expert Michael Sans who did the service. We will
then complete our journey at first light tomorrow morning, arriving in
Madeira round about lunch time. Well, that’s the plan!
