Atlantic Crossing Day 4 15:58.4N 33:31.2W

Stargazer
Andy & Jo
Thu 2 Mar 2023 18:39

Atlantic Crossing Day 4  - Thursday 2nd March 2023

 

Today’s run from 1300 ship’s time yesterday to 1300 ship’s time today was a little disappointing for us, being 130NM. Still 130NM is not too bad, but after the excitement of 160NM yesterday and fully knowing that Stargazer is capable of 180NM+ we couldn’t help but feel a little below par about it. There were reasons: the weather overnight was strange, the wind veered by some 20 degrees, sending us further north than we wanted to go (gybing was out of the question in the seas at the time), then the wind died almost to a zephyr, then the Duogen got so clogged up it became a drag (literally) on speed. However, we can report that we are one quarter of the way across the Atlantic Ocean!! Sadly the mate says we can’t have a small tipple until we are half way across – oh well.

 

Today has been bright & warm with decent seas. We were able to raise the number 4 jib on its separate stay and pole it out to windward whilst the genoa is flying happily to leeward. So with the ‘twins’ up speed has greatly improved and the rolling is far less. Anyone who knows me as their instructor – if you run like this, close the leaches down, or you’ll roll like a ##### Also, today we have been under aerial bombardment of three seabirds looking for a place to land. They didn’t seem to like the look of us and went on their way. I think the mate will have something to say about this.

 

The motion overnight, last night, wasn’t particularly conducive to good sleep, especially early on but by early morning conditions were pretty OK. The main issue in the night was being on the edge of a ‘near squall’. The wind would veer, the seas would increase, the wind would pick up and the stars would be covered by clouds. Then, after about an hour it all went away and we were back to normal, with no excess wind or rain – weird but marvellous!

 

This morning (I generally arrive on deck about 1000) was clear and bright and after clearing the Duogen (which looked as though a farmer had borrowed it overnight to make haystacks there was so much weed on it – despite the clearing lines) and the flying fish, we carried on our boat life without fuss – mmm, we must be getting into it now?? The mate was already on deck when I arrived (it’s all to do with watch systems) and asked me when do we change the ship’s clock. Maybe tomorrow I replied. Oh, said the mate, what time will it be then? Anything you like I replied, as long as it’s within reason – what time would you like it to go dark? Not sure said the mate. OK, how about 1900. Fine with me, she said… The moral here is that as long as we end up three hours behind where we are now on arrival in St Lucia we can do as we wish in the meantime. The practicality of course is always to have a timepiece onboard showing GMT (so you know where you are). I haven’t told the mate where this as, as all sorts of confusion may result… (Note: Skip actually set one of the clocks onboard to GMT whilst we were in Cape Verde and so has been confused as to what the ‘real’ time is for a while!).

 

We’re looking forward to hopefully a calm and pleasant (sleep-able) night and with the twins up, we should be able to report a better distance run tomorrow, mind you, the wind is down to about 14 knots, sometimes less and Duogen is clogged again. The clogging of the Duogen is becoming a major pain as it’s such a good power source, but when covered in weed it does very little except slow the boat down and it is a pig to recover. We’ll have to hope that all this Sargasso weed goes away soon, or clearing the Duogen is likely to become a three hourly job (we seem to have an issue with the C bracket already, from the number of times we’ve been hauling it up – we use brute force for this as we don’t want to slow the boat down, but we do wait for it the be at the top of a wave when it is lifting naturally – a good heave at the right time usually brings it up). We could put it in wind mode, but the apparent wind at the moment isn’t enough to get a decent charge from it and it makes a bit of a racket at night. We’ll report back with how we get on with this.

 

Here’s the mate:

Ahhhhh, I have just had a seawater bird bath in the cockpit and feel like a new woman! We are rationing fresh water somewhat as we were a little over diligent with sterilising one of the water tanks before we left Mindelo, resulting in some rather hygienically clean smelling water. We still have the two main tanks full so this isn’t a total disaster, but whilst we work out how to rectify this then we are using seawater for as much as possible (hopefully without Sargasso/Sargassum? weed).

 

We haven’t seen much marine life so far, maybe due to the lively seas making observation tricky to say the least. It has calmed down a bit now so I am keeping my eyes peeled. There are plenty of flying fish (not too many casualties on the deck so far) and a few storm petrels, tropic birds (I think!) and (Skip thinks I am pulling his leg on this one!) boobies :)

 

It feels like we have got into the sailing groove and found our rhythm over the past day or so. Almost 72hrs to the hour after we left something clicked and I felt significantly more human than I had done since we left Mindelo – hoorah. Dinner is cooking itself in the Wonderbag (thanks Vics) so I’m going to head back on deck and make inroads into the unmentionably large quantity of  crisps I have shipped! Alas not to be accompanied by a G&T but hopefully we’ll hit the halfway point in four days so we can enjoy a celebratory tipple (which will be the only one until we reach Rodney Bay – and then no-one will be counting!!!).