Wilmington to Bermuda Day 4

32:48.85N 69:54.96W

4^th  June 2015

412 Miles from Wilmington 

8795 Miles from Ramsgate by log.

            Well the Dorado dinner never happened which was a surprise to me as I was sure we would catch the big one. Needles to say the lures are still out and there must be a fish out there with our name on it.

Night three went without incident and both Jen and Adamant have now completed their first solo night shifts. Well nearly solo, I slept in the cockpit but was not needed so all is good on that front. With thoughts of Willem joining us in the Azores I thought it best to get the sextant out and make sure it was all ok. That turned into a teaching session with Jen and Norma ,who both managed to take a Sun sight. That evening I took a sight from the moon and from Venus so all is well with the sextant. Adamant has turned out to be a bit of a sailing guru, he showed us all up with his knowledge of sound signals and obscure lights when we were playing with the flash cards for Jens benefit and he adjusted the sextant for errors before we had a go with that. We did try to take a sight from the pole star but it was too small and the boat too jumpy to keep it in the sights long enough, so eventually I gave up on the effort and called it a day. The wind finally arrived yesterday and we managed 7 hours of sailing with the wind on the beam at a steady force 3 which was a real tonic. Unfortunately all good things come to an end and as the sun went down the wind went with it so it was on with the engine again. In the early hours the wind picked up again and we sailed for the rest of the third night making steady progress.

This morning I was called with the most scary call a skipper can hear at sea…”Paul the toilet has blocked”. I must admit I ignored the problem until I had finished my breakfast and then I did a bit more ignoring while I had a cup of tea, eventually even I had to admit that I had really delayed the job for as long as I could. I girded my loins and after fetching a bundle of tools and a torch from the locker I was joined by Adamant who wanted to see how to fix a toilet (????????) that is a skill I wished I had never mastered. Joy of joys it was just the inlet/outlet switch that was stuck so ten minutes later we have a working forward heads. To celebrate I went and sat on our all singing and all dancing electric throne in the aft cabin which promptly refused to flush, have I ever mentioned just how much I hate toilets. I suspect the problem is that the pump is getting old and will not spin fast enough without full power so I will try it again this afternoon when we do a generator run.

That afternoon after a tack the aft heads decided it liked that angle and flushed perfectly so it must have been air locked. Two toilets fixed and I didn’t even get my hands dirty, all is definitely well with the world. The wind has stayed with us and is now blowing a steady 14-15 knots from the South East, unfortunately Bermuda is to the South East which means our present course will take us about as we 60 miles North of Bermuda and onto a point somewhere in the middle of the Azores. My present plan is still to try to make Bermuda as it would be nice to fill the fuel tanks again in anticipation of the Azores high and its fluky winds.

Last night and yesterday was pretty busy with the wind jumping about the compass and constantly changing in strength keeping everyone on their toes as we  tried to get as much South into our heading as we could.

So what went on on the good ship Spectra; Norma did manage to complete her painting of Grenada for Paula and Andrew and so she is slowly catching up on her self induced backlog. A flurry of excitement met the sighting of our first whales of this trip even though they were a long way off and all that we really saw was the water spouts. Adamant won the chocolate bar challenge for the predicted log and this morning we were greeted by our first flying fish on deck, they really are smelly you know.

That’s it for now, next blog on Saturday by which time we should either be in Bermuda or we will have bypassed it and be sailing directly for the Azores.