motoring on
Moorglade's Voyage
Ted Wilson
Sun 30 Jun 2013 18:29
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Our position is 39:27.76N 34:18.04W
Distance logged in the last 24 hours 127
Nm
Distance to Flores 153
The wind stays in the East with the strength
varying over the 24hour period between calm and about 15kts, so the iron topsail
remains set. The constant noise and the motion are irritating and it reflects in
the crews mood, settled to the task but less jovial with more time spent
listening to music in their bunks.
Worth reporting though are the excellent sighting
of several spouting whales on our port side yesterday evening. They were some
distance away but clearly visible and stayed with us for quite a while. We
stopped seeing turtles about a couple of days ago. Also of note was an odd event
on my 03:00 to 06:00 watch this morning. It was an overcast night with the
waning moon behind cloud. An area of cloud, away from the moon, in the North
West sky started to glow and then an intense green white light broke through the
cloud with it's light reflecting off the clouds lower surface. It was short
lived but it's trajectory was clearly meeting the sea about half way
to our horizon. A new sight for me, I can only surmise it was a meteor or
piece of space debris returning to earth. I only drink strong coffee on
watch.
Early yesterday evening there seemed a chance that
we might make Porto das Lajes, Flores, before dark on Monday evening but a
rising wind and head sea made it only a remote possibility, which was completely
despatched when the exhaust temperature warning light came on during the night.
It was ok at slower revs and that reluctance to be proactive on night
watches prevailed, so it was not until early this morning we stopped the engine
and inspected the weed strainer on the raw water inlet. After removing a piece
of plastic and a quantity of sea weed we were back to normal again.
With no moonlight until the early hours we have
decided to time our approach to enter port just after dawn on Tuesday. We think
the new marina and customs get going at 8 am.
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