Lanzarote to Mindelo. Day 6. Friday 3^rd February 2023.

Noon GMT report

We seem to have comms. Thanks Mailasail – good offshore support. Sadly, though, we’ve used over half of our satellite minutes sorting it all out, but we’ll know next time.

Yesterday afternoon passed with OK conditions, good wind and good boat speed. Stargazer clocking 150NM in a 24 hour run, that’s 6.25 knots average. Today will be a little slower as the wind died a bit overnight and into this morning (and still as I write). The night, again, was very cold. We’ve no idea why, being now 20 deg north. How far south does one have to travel to find sun and warmth? Mmm, hopefully not much further (*I was expecting bikini sailing by now!! – Mate).

Anyhow the current weather is looking rather ‘weird’. It’s difficult to describe and we’re used to weather in temperate zones not the tropics, but I would say that we are in a warm sector – let’s just hope a cold front isn’t next (I don’t think it will be). You can get squalls in the tropics (we had a mini one yesterday) and we’ve been using the CAPE weather measure to assess the likelihood of such. But the CAPE value takes so long to get via sat comms that we can’t get it offshore. For those interested, sat comms via our system are slower than dial-up used to be.

All is fine on board. The mate’s being doing a great job especially as she let me sleep in until 1030 this morning. My first off-watch is 2000 to 2300 and it can be difficult to sleep at that time, meaning you can end up 3 hours short each day, so constant napping is the only way to catch up.

We haven’t seen any ships for a couple of days, or much marine wildlife (a couple of distant whale blows and a couple of dolphin fins surfing past the boat) but the seas have been a little high to make spotting things easy! The mate has enjoyed watching little Storm petrels swooping past and pattering their feet on the water – such small birds in such a big ocean. We did see a turtle (Leatherback?) cruising past yesterday and a large unidentified jellyfish. The mate really needs to brush up on her ID skills… (This para was written by the mate!)

Stargazer’s going well and I’m pleased to be able to suggest an eta for Mindelo. Unfortunately this would be Sunday evening. As the marina staff would not be there and it is an unknown harbour approach with an unknown anchorage with plenty of ‘obstacles’ in the way, we’ve sensibly decided to slow down as needed and approach Mindelo on Monday morning at first light (about 0700) meaning we’d be in the marina by lunchtime. This has the further advantage of being able to clear in with Immigration and Customs in normal office hours, avoiding overtime payments for an out of hours arrival. After that, the bar should be open. Rumour has it that the floating mar in Mindelo marina is excellent – we’re going to find out!!

Right, we’re off to keep our eye on this weather.

Andy & Jo