Day 19 - Passage to the Caribbean
Misterx
Sun 20 Apr 2025 00:13
19/04/25
8:30 pm
Day 19
North Atlantic Ocean
DTD : 1,904 NM (125NM)
We're through the ITCZ!!! The writing was on the wall since yesterday evening, the clouds were letting some blue sky showing and more stars were visible during the night. And this morning, the cloud bank was behind us... some grey stragglers brought wind, a lot of it, but no rain. By mid morning we had a brilliant sunshine, a lot of wind and still a very confused sea. As the day progressed, the sea flattened and the wind settled down. But still far too many waves landing in the cockpit for my liking, not going out in that!!!
Mr X is going well and in the right direction. Turns out he weather Gurus were right after all!!
We were really lucky, only one awful day of strong winds, driving rain and huge waves, as for the quiet patches, they didn't last that long, we logged an average of 5/6 hours per day motoring for a total of 4 days and we had a couple of nights drifting. Not bad at all.
Despite our exiting of the ITCZ zone, our day has not really been relaxed, a few things have cropped up.
The seaweed is getting much worse, great big islands floating on the wind, so toward us, impossible to avoid and playing havoc with the wind steering vane. The seaweed get caught up on its rudder and line trailing in the water and before you know it you have a clump as big as a football. The trouble is that dragging this clump affect the working of the vane. The weight of it is skewing its driving and the genoa starts flapping... so the clump has got to be removed by shaking the line used to pull up the rudder, and that happens very, very often. My job for the evening, listen to the genoa, if flapping, do the 3m run to the stern, peer over the side and unclog the rudder by shaking the line vigorously, run back hopefully without being drenched by a rogue wave! A bit of an hindrance really, and we can't think of anything to avoid the seaweed clogging up the system. Just hoping that the seaweed will disappear soon.
It is high water in the engine compartment bilge again! We've been very assiduous with emptying the back bilge that feeds into the engine one, everyday, but with the driving rain, the big waves crashing and the jerking movement of the boat, It just wasn't enough. So we had to do our party trick, involving oily water in bucket to be thrown overboard without spilling a drop! Yep, that Pants Job! It didn't work very well... a huge wave came crashing in the cockpit as I was handing over the bucket to Ian... Needless to say, oily water everywhere, and the air was blue with expletives! We're giving up on the bucket tomorrow... we'll find our little hand pump and get that oily water into one of our empty 5 litre water bottle... At least it won't spill in transport.
Glad to be out of the nasty zone... hopefully we will settle down in the trade winds, get back to a more predictable, dryer, sunny world!
M