Someone
who supposed to be the expert sailor doing 3 circumnavigations told me it was
impossible for the Trade Winds not to be there. Never mind climate changes. Some
years they might a little further south but due to the rotation of the earth and
the temperature differences between the high and lower latitudes the Trade Winds
will always be there.
Well, I
suppose this someone should come down here and explain us why there is a huge
area of very little wind for days on end. Very little wind and coming from the
North East. Headwinds sort to speak, certainly not Trade Winds that’s for sure.
I guess we should call them Trade Off
Winds. Bah. We have been running the engine now for a full day and it looks
like will keep running it for some time trying to navigate us out of this area.
Running
the engine for a period this long, one has to be concerned about diesel. We
don’t have a big diesel tank but we do have extra cans of diesel with me. Today
seems as a good day to top of the tank with the spares. After pouring only
110
litres in the tank it was filled to the rim. It meant our
trusted Yanmar engine (56 HP) is using little over 2 litres per hour at 1700
rpm. Amazing!
Of course
she did get a lot of TLC in Las
Palmas including full maintenance with valve timing
adjustment, but still 2
litre per hour! The entire trip we’ve been
running the engine a couple of times to top up the batteries or get out of some
wind calm. But we did that with minimum RPM. This strategy certainly paid off.
We still have 260
litre left at our disposal which represents more than 100
hours of running the engine with enough safety margin.
Yannick by
the way has found a new (tertiary?) Navigation technique. It does not use
coordinates. No that would not be user friendly (are you listening Bill Gates).
It does not use areas like the weather areas likes the ARC uses. It only uses
the Letters N A E C O ¨space¨ C I T N A L T A¨ in that specific order. At the
moment we are at the letter T.
Actually
if you put all those letters backwards it spells out ¨Atlantic Ocean¨ a word
that is displayed in the centre of our chart plotter and the symbol representing
SeaWalk is gently going from letter to letter towards St Lucia. And
from time to time Yannick will shout: ¨We
are at letter C now¨ or something like it. Agreed, it is not a
internationally acceptable method but if all ARC yachts would use our (golden
oldie) chart plotter, position reporting to the ARC would be much more
fun.
Today I
suggested to Isabelle going fishing again. She agreed that she could find some
room in the menu if I did caught a fish. So the lure went overboard again. And
Bingo! Within 2 hours I look back at the boat and see a big trail of white water
some 70
metres behind the boat. At that moment I was topping up
the diesel tank with Yannick so we had to split tasks. Yannick reeled in the
fish while I closed up the tank temporarily.
He brought
in a nice looking Barracuda of about
75
centimetres. It looked pretty big if you ask me. I hooked
it with the Gaff Hook and landed it on deck. It weight somewhere in between 5
and 10 kilo’s. And I made some nice fillets out of it. Isabelle cooked up a real
nice Risotto so diner was once more (and as always, did I mention Isabelle
cooked up French Fries with fresh Sausages yesterday, yummy?) truly a feast. I
truly feel sorry for Windancer having lost all their hooks. Getting fresh fish
on the diner table is definitely a good thing.
At the
moment the weather is fantastic. Unfortunately no wind but very warm and sunny.
Inside all the windows are open to get some breeze in. On our eve - and night
watches, we only need to wear shorts and shortsleeve shirts. Just over a week
ago we were still sitting in the cockpit with all our gear on to keep from being
cold. Yannick, sleeping in our front cabin where it is especially hot, prefers
sleeping on deck as it is atleast nice and cool there. What a nice
change!
Tomorrowmorning
is our 1000 miles to go party, don’t miss it, some VIP
tickets are still available at the ARC office located in the front cabin at
SeaWalk.
