38 36.74N 017 20.220E heading 50 degrees 120. NM to Corfu - at sea
Pipedream
Wed 22 Sep 2010 10:23
We had mill pond conditions only about 5 kts of wind clocking around all night. We are managing to hold a pretty steady 4 to 4.5 kts motor sailing. I just hate using up all the diesel fuel we bought. As Katie pointed out however, this is better than the 40 kts of wind and subsequent seas that are forecast along this route for later this week.
We encountered quite a bit of traffic last night and Katie woke me up twice. We changed course only once to avoid a Princess cruise ship. Two mile away is about as close as I want to get if we have enough maneuvering room. With the two of us, we continue to experiment with the amount of time we stand watch. You are trading 4 hours at the wheel against 4 hours of continuous sleep. We tried a 3 hour schedule last night. Not too bad.
Usually I just set the course to our next destination and motor if the wind is not right. In this case we have about another 28 hours left before we get to Corfu. I am thinking of tacking. (doing zig zags in a under sail because you can't sail directly into the wind...) My experience is that the boat will sail faster but, we actually loose quite a bit of time not going in a straight line. We would save some of the$6.00 a gallon fuel however.