Atlantic Ocean

Saxon Blue's Blog
Harvey Jones and Andrea Stokes
Fri 31 Dec 2010 21:55
29:00.301N 62:51.268W Friday evening

According to the chart, we're in the Atlantic Ocean but I haven't seen any sign of it, just loads of waves and sea. I've been on watch since about 0730 and it's now 16:30 and, in that whole time, I've seen one tanker, one container ship, one lost buoy and a single seagull. The water temperature has gone up gradually all day and it's now 24.8 degrees Centigrade which seems pretty warm to me but it's still too cold for Bill.

The wind has been on our port quarter all day but not quite enough to sail. We've had the motor on all the time with the genoa poled out to give us a bit more speed but it's still pretty rolly. I've felt good all day although I did wake up in the middle of the night feeling queasy for a while. I had to concentrate on not letting it get on top of me. Since then, I've been OK and I've eaten modest quantities of food so my energy levels are much better than if I'm too sick to eat.

We spoke to Bill on Alerre at 0800 as arranged. They're all OK but their Iridium phone has run out of minutes so Bill wanted us to pass a message to his shoreside contact to get more airtime. I did that but she has a question about it all so I still don't think he's got his minutes. We could hear Bill really well but he couldn't hear us after a while. Not sure whose fault that was. It was the first time I've actually used the SSB to talk to another ship so that's good - I use it all the time to send these blogs through, of course.

There's not much else to report, really. Kali and I fixed yet another broken batten in the mainsail. They're just not up to the job and I don't really think they serve a very useful purpose, either. I'd much rather just have a battenless sail, even if it would mean a negative roach. We'd lose a tiny fraction of power but gain a lot of reliability which is always a worthwhile tradeoff on a cruising boat.

Apart from that, I've spent a lot of time on my own in the cockpit looking out at the sea interspersed with gentle, relaxed conversation with Kali and Bill when they're around. We're making good time and it looks as though we might arrive in St Martin on the 4th of Jan, which is the same day as Andrea. Now that would be good timing!

Harvey

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