We had a lively night with over 20 knots of wind and a lumpy sea. We had to radio up a couple of ships during the night, one was overtaking us to windward and we desperately needed to head up to wind in order to reef so we asked him to move over a little and keep out of our way – he was very obliging.  Then we had a cocked hat of ships where two needed to give way but we couldn’t as we had the genoa poled out, boom preventers set, etc. so asked one ship to go behind us, it gave him a challenge but again the captain was very obliging.   

There have been a few problems on this trip, the generator fuel pump failed so we’ve had to conserve water as the water maker relies on the generator to function. Conserving water has been easy, we’re just smellier! We had less fuel on board than we thought so couldn’t afford to motor sail in the calms but having no generator we’ve had to use the main engine to charge the batteries and in so doing used four times more fuel than usual for charging them compared to the generator.

The satellite phone has been very temperamental about getting signals, this might be a phone / antenna issue but it might be that the Iridium satellite over South America has been playing up.

Anyway we will be in Chaguaramas tomorrow; we’ll be ready for a beer or two (of course that’s after we’ve had a shower).