Midnight we had made it as far as 16:20.08N 53:0.94W – Friday 19th of December, 2008.

Engine Time – 10.6 Hours

We sailed the best we could through the night to be totally becalmed by 5:30 AM as per normal, it is a horrible sound as the boat rocks back and forth and all you can here is the sails flapping and the rigging cracking.

On goes the engine at a lazy 1600 RPM just enough to tick her over and make Silky travel along at about 3 Knot’s. Believe me a puff of wind can make us move faster than this so the engine is really the last resort.

We motored all day and watched squalls of rain poor down around us but never on us.  We watch the sun scorch the boat and us for that matter. We watched the water and each other. We were both close to going mad; we had been through this already in our trip at the beginning and did not want to do it again. I tell you no wind is worse than too much wind.

Well some wind did make it our way by the evening, check out the clouds in the picture’s Fi and I both thought the world was about to collapse in on itself.

Special comments by Fiona:  Becalmed once again!  Back in the day (all of last year) when we were learning to sail Silky in the Solent, I used to love the days when we’d go out and there was no wind.  It meant for me, no heeling over of the boat, and a calm and smooth ride.  You can obviously see what sailing meant to me then.  But that was then and this is now, when I have come to love sailing along at a steady 15 knots on the beam.  Any-way getting back to being becalmed, it drives me mad just bopping along like a sitting duck and knowing that I could swim faster than this.  I guess it does give us a chance to laze about, which is exactly what we did.

Day 150

Traveling Direction – West

Wind Direction – No Wind until 8PM (North)

Swell – Flat as a pancake

Average Speed –  3.9

Top Speed – ?

Distance Covered – 93.6 Nautical Miles