Thursday night into Friday morning was all good.  We had pleasant sailing conditions and we were crossing tacks with the German yacht ‘Peter’.  The wind and sea state were slowly declining and we spent some time playing the shifts to improve our progress towards Horta.    However, as is routine, the wind tends to drop faster than the sea state and by lunch time Friday we were left with very light wind but still a rather lumpy sea so we motor- sailed for 4 to 5 hours to help us punch through the waves.    But then, dear reader, catastrophe for us -  the engine staggered to a halt, which is something we have experienced before, and Nigel promptly moved to change the filters which has been the usual cause for our engine stopping previously.   This can be a messy business at certain angles of heel and diesel fuel has the kind of aroma  which is difficult to like.  However, we were unable to complete the process of changing the filters as the manual lift pump to bleed the system appeared not to be working.   Nigel tried a number of techniques, including sucking the diesel fuel by mouth  (not recommended before a romantic dinner for two!) but to no avail.    This was something that could not be repaired at sea so in a nutshell we had no engine!!

Fortunately having had the engine running for a number of hours we had a full battery and extra fortunately the aforementioned German yacht was only 4 miles away.    After a number of exchanges on the VHF, during which we discussed the vagaries of diesel engine maintenance, Christian, the skipper of Peter,  agreed to stand by and if need be offered us a tow into Horta if the wind disappeared.   

By Saturday morning 5am the wind had indeed dropped as forecast and Christian called us up on the VHF to offer us assistance.    So, as we write, we are under tow 30 miles from Horta, in calm seas, thankfully, and extremely grateful that Yacht Peter had been so close by.   We should reach Horta late this afternoon after 18 days at sea!

Our current position is 38 05.201N 29 07.250W