Last night was a stonking sail. Our forecast said that the wind would get up at 18:00, and as that is dusk we took down the Parasail (in anticipation of this we had had a couple of practice runs during the day -the first a disaster, but the next two perfect) and moved to a normal rig. Just as well as the wind came in as predicted at 18/ 20 kts and gave us an average speed of 6/6.5 knots. We put one reef in the main to stabilize the boat. Wind direction is highly variable so through the night and early morning we used our Hydrovane self steering gear which steers to the wind. This is another great piece of kit. The auto helm is great too, but cannot cope with wind direction variation. Also the Hydrovane uses no power so with the Duogen we have well recharged batteries in the morning to make water with.

Except that we can’t at the moment!

Because of the breeze and more close hauled point of sail, the sea has become rough and so the water maker takes in air and stops working because it compresses the sea water. So difficult to have one's cake and eat it, or in our case masses of sea (rather than engine) generated power and water!

So we have gone onto water saving mode –ie use as little as possible by turning off the pump so you only hand pump what you need. For the technical, I have the main tank with 120 lts, which doesn’t really go that far, and I have installed two 70 ltr bladder tanks. The main and one bladder is 'sealed' for emergency use whilst the other is used on a daily basis – when it runs dry we make some more! Or that’s the theory…… So far on this trip we have made 250 lts so it shows how much  we can get through it in less than a week. And that’s with no females aboard (ER can use this at one go at home). Mind you, we have at least each been able to take a shower so maybe I should take that comment back! 

Maybe I’ll try again later on when our sailing position changes.

Rather more fun is that over the last two days we have seen masses of dolphin (so haven’t had the line out again). We’ve had them alongside, playing at the pulpit, and leaping into the air. The only troble is that they, and anything else we haven't seen, swim under the boat and set of the depth alarm which assumes we are about to ground.It took ages to work through the manual to switch it off for the duration.

Pictures below courtesy of Jock who seems to be quite adept a number of things! And more on that in future as well.

Playing at the pullpit                                                  A splendid picture from ' Jock - The photo'                     Alongside. I reckon at least 50 or so of them

So that's it for now.It will have been a week tomorrow so i'll let you how we are getting on.

PS After a number of attempts to bleed and restart the system, I have actually got the water maker to goi n quieter seas. Great relief all round!