37:39.210 N  018:25.362 W

04/07/10

18:00

Whatever HOPPETOSSE was doing with his sails he got sorted and they passed in front of us.  Being a swan they were able to point a bit higher than we were.

Were settling in to life at  15-20 degrees of heel.  Its gone a bit grey and it definitely feels like were in The North Atlantic.  Were sheeted in pretty hard and the wind is currently NNE Force 5 gusting 6.  The sea is livening up and we occasionally crash into a wave with  a very big thud.  We been sailing with one reef in the main and two in the yankee.  We’ve just added another in the main to make it possible to cook. Boat speed is down to 6 ½  knots but its much more comfortable.

05/07/10

00:00

Dark night.  Wind NE Force 6. Still double reefed main and double reefed yankee.

We’ve seen several yachts and some cargo ships, so we’re certainly near the shipping lanes.

11:00

Wind carries on a healthy NE Force 6.  We try the staysail which gives a smoother ride, less healing but doesn’t really have the drive,  adding a bit more mainsail seems to do the trick.  Waves crashing on the deck, and even our sheltered cockpit gets drenched.  The DC generator needs a new impellor which is stored under Adam’s bunk and he’s asleep at the moment. The AC generator has stopped playing as well although we don’t yet know why.  The watermaker only seems to work on the starboard tack as we’re heeling too much on the Port tack.

If the water gets too low we’ll have to tack North for a few hours.

All this and no sun.

While typing Adam has surfaced and it’s going to be bacon butties all round.  It’s definitely the weather for it.   We slow the boat and level it by heading downwind so Steve can change the impellor. It seems we're run out of gaskets so he's improvising one from a cereal pack.

Yesterday’s run was 171 miles all under sail, 640 to go, I attach a couple of snaps of the big Swan, of course with out a scale reference it could be any size,  It does heel just like SPINDRIFT, even though it cost 10,000,000 more.