Atlantic Crossing Day 11  - Thursday 9^th March 2023

Last night was nice and peaceful. Very calm (no wind) and little swell, so we slept well.

Today has a little more breeze(8 to 9 knots) so we’ve hoisted the spinnaker. Henrietta (as we call the spinnaker, because the flamboyant colours remind us of ladies dresses at Henley) has us ‘powering’ along at up to 5 kts in this breeze, so we’re pretty pleased with that. We’ll douse the kite in the late afternoon though as flying them at night with a short-handed crew is not the most sensible thing to do.

The mate’s been going through the food supplies as due to be being becalmed for four days (four and half actually) and having to head south for breeze (elongating our passage distance) it looks as though we’ll be out here for five to seven days longer than planned (we aren’t even half way through our crisp rations yet, so we will survive – Mate). We’ve put our egos away about being able to tell people that we flew across the Atlantic in 13 days –but only in a small way - as we’ll still say we flew across the Atlantic in good time, but were out there for longer due to be being becalmed. Still, there are not many people who will have flown spinnakers in mid ocean and not many who will have enjoyed such tranquillity and peace during the periods of little wind and swell.

More wind is forecast by tomorrow, the gribs tell us that we’ll be almost back to expected weather patterns (this far south at any rate) so we’ll sail with the twin headsail setup and make good as much distance as we can. The following days also look as though breeze will be with us, so our moral will be boosted by cracking off some DTG and being able to give a reasonable guestimate of our ETA at Rodney Bay.

Today, as well as the kite being up, we’ve made loads of water, which I’m putting in our now empty port tank (starboard is still pretty full). The middle tank (being over-treated at the outset) is tasting a little better, but is still designated as ‘emergencies only’. The day is hot, probably the hottest day we’ve had, so I’m guessing around 39 deg in the shade and 27.5 deg water temperature (as told by our instruments) – although it still feels a bit cold when we wash in it!

Tonight, we’ll focus on settling the boat down as best we can whilst making some sort of progress while we sleep and do our watches. Despite best efforts of sailing all day with the kite up, our last 24 hours run has only been 85NM, but the wind throughout the afternoon has been 9kn at best and more usually 6kn. Good old Henrietta for pulling us along at 4.5 to 5 kn in that!

Over to the mate:

I am writing this in a semi-molten state! It is 1415 ship’s time – which is a little arbitrary as we probably should have put the clocks back again by now, but that would make it dark before we’ve finished our dinner in the cockpit, so for now we are staying on CASGT (Central Atlantic Stargazer Time) because we can – and it is HOT, even under my makeshift sunshade! It would be nice to go for another mid-ocean dip but we are currently moving too fast. At least I can look forward to a cooling cockpit bird bath later :)

We have so  much power from solar at the moment that the dump resistors are dumping power, so Skip has just come down to turn the watermaker on to turn more ocean into drinking water (that this can be done at such speed by such a small bit of kit always amazes me!). You don’t have to know Skip too well to know his love of tea. He has now taken this to a new level by making fresh water every morning, using the watermaker, for his morning cuppa(s)!!

I did have a minor panic a few days ago when it became clear that we weren’t going to make landfall in 15 days… my supplies of lip balm were starting to run low – eek! Thinking rationally (eventually) I went through various bags, pockets, hidey holes and have unearthed backup after backup after backup. So all is well, phew.

OK it’s time to douse the kite…