Day 26 - Passage to the Caribbean
Misterx
Sun 27 Apr 2025 00:26
26/04/25
8:30 pm
Day 26
North Atlantic Ocean
DTD to Trinidad: 1,070 NM (105NM)
We lost the genoa today...
After over 9 years of good and loyal service, it just gave up with a huge sigh, and a split in the middle, no theatrics, no drama, no uncontrolled flapping... and it wasn't even a big gust... we just watched it collapse into itself like it was taking a last bow, waiting for a round of applause. It nearly made it all the way around the world, too, nearly. But it had a very hard life, as our main genoa, it was mainly up, and more often then not, Mr X was powered by it alone. Not sure how old it was as it came with the boat when we bought it. We did however take good care of it, cleaned and looked over each year by a professional, repaired as necessary and pre-emptedly. We knew the last repair in St Helena would probably be the last, still, it done us proud to make it so far. It's a good way to go, doing your stuff to the last. We were just grateful that all this happened around midday, in broad day light. Made it easy to swap to another sail.
We have another genoa for the roller furler, but in the current conditions it will be difficult to hoist as it's huge, so we have gone back to the hanked on working jib. As it turns out, it works pretty well. The wind is oscillating between 15 to 20 knots with gusts up to 23/24, and that will be the case for the next few days. So we are getting our target 4.5/5 knots of boat speed. Should the wind drop below 15, we'll have the option of putting the main up or the other genoa if the conditions are mild enough.
In other news, our Weather Guru has suggested heading towards Barbados instead of Trinidad, for the moment. The closer we are to the Brazil coast, the higher chance we have of encountering enhanced ITCZ squalls. If we were to stay on our current course, we would come within a 30 miles range of the Doldrums, so going further north, another 80 nm up will ensure that we are well away from any disturbances. And looking at the route it is only adding 20 to 30 nm extra. It may be a bit more rolly and jumpy as we'll be closer to the wind but that's better than the alternative.
Water in the bilges and Sargasso weed situation, the same... lots of bailing out and de-weeding...
Another eventful day on Mr X...
M