Day 24: More Squid Less Mainsail
Purple Mist
Skipper: Kate Cope
Sun 9 Oct 2022 19:07
29:45.866N 13:00.462W
Day 24: More Squid Less Mainsail
Less than a Cherbourg to go. We should arrive in Lanzarote in the early hrs of Monday morning. Another 160NM knocked off in the last 24hrs.
Wind has steadily decreased but the boat is still plodding along almost dead downwind with the poled out jib.
Just after hoisting the jib this morning I saw a larger nasty black stain on deck, upon investigation a very large squid poked its big blue eye out from where it was nestling in the track ….errr this one was full of ink and had made a right mess on the deck.
The mainsail is now officially falling apart. I have scissors on deck to cut off the delaminated parts as I don’t want the plastic to end up in the sea. I’ve decided it’s now a waste of my precious sail kit supplies to keep patching it up so what delaminates now gets chopped off. Worst case if it tears we have diesel to motor from here.
Jerry asked me about power, in fact the Efoy (now less than 4 amps) and the 100Q solar ( 1.5-2.5amps) are keeping up with demand so no engine needed. I have reduced demand by turning off the nemesis display and use a small portable solar with usb to charge my phone, iPad, Bluetooth speaker and toothbrush. The real power drain is the combined Certus Sat data, laptop and Redbox screener I use to send you this blog so that is only on for a few minutes whilst in use.
