Atlantic Crossing Day 5  - Friday 3^rd March 2023

We enjoyed a nice quiet night last night. Stargazer, sailing along at around 6 knots with her two headsails up taking us to the westward was enjoying being on the ocean, so we just let her get on with it.

Earlier there had been some discussion about time and time zones; the mate, clearly did not want to have her ‘natural rhythm’ disturbed, so I suggested we change the ship’s clock by 30 mins and then by another 30 mins in a day or twos time. This means we are currently running at GMT-1.5. In another 15 degrees of longitude, we’ll change another hour (probably in 2 x 30 mins again). Anyway, enough of time for now…

After a lovely early supper of veggie chilli (I put some meat in mine) we settled into our watch systems. As we’re not sure if we’ve explained this, here’s how it works: I sleep from 2000 to 2300 whilst the mate is on watch, then the mate sleeps from 2300 to 0200, then I sleep from 0200 to 0500, then the mate sleeps from 0500 to 0800. We both then try and grab a couple of hours each in the day, I usually try for 0800 to 1000. Being on watch on deck on your own at night (we are clipped onto the boat, fear not) is sometimes a wonderful experience. As long as all is well with the weather and the boat, then all you have to do is keep a look out (there’s nothing out here mind you) and look at the stars, record the log and keep a check on wind directions. The night sky mid-Atlantic is wonderful mind boggling thing, you have never seen so many stars. There are shooting stars almost every night and the moon lights our way as we head west – you have to see it for yourself, words won’t do! For our passage thus far, we have Jupiter and Uranus on the bow shining our way brightly. Polaris is so low in the sky (compared to the UK) that it’s obvious we’re in the tropics without any need for sextant calculations. Speaking of which, our first sun sight en route to Cabo Verde resulted in being only 4.8NM out. This is a super result, it’s more than likely due to my 1967 Henry Hughes sextant than anything else. When I first came this way I used a plastic sextant – with predictable results.

Back to today, we were disturbed that our battery bank was down by about 48 amps this morning. Sadly, the duogen had once again ploughed through some Sargasso weed – you can’t see it at night, but you can tell all is well or not by the noise it makes. We knew all wasn’t well, but there was nothing to be done until first light. Having thought about it, I decided a recovery block on the backstay would give a better angle for the recovery line. The mate agreed (having read the manual, as women tend to do). So at 0700 (ship’s time) when it was becoming light I fixed a block to the backstay as high as I could reach and fed the recovery line through it. Lo and behold, recovery was easy! We have since improved on this by adding a second line to help with the angle of recovery – sorry, I’m boring you…

Although I must say that the duogen is a fine piece of equipment. When I first saw it, I thought ‘uh ho’, a PHD students project, but I was wrong and full marks to Stargazer’s previous owners for fitting it.

The day, today, has been a mix of checking the boat and relaxing (get that – relaxing! On a boat! Wow, but we did, and hope to tomorrow too). The weather has brought a lot of swell from the north (beam on the Stargazer) so not too pleasant. It’s the result of the next low pressure system coming across the Atlantic to the north of us. As we’ve said, these systems usually go much further north. This one seems to be heading for the Canaries – I ask you?? The wind itself has been a pleasant 14 to 19 knots and we hope to report a good distance run tomorrow. Today, Stargazer managed 148NM, pretty good as the winds have been on the lighter side and the duogen was a ‘drag’ on speed.

Tomorrow, all things being equal, we hope to make some water with the water maker and the mate might get her fishing rod out. I’ve seen Mahi Mahi being caught before. It makes a right mess and I have explained to the mate that I know NOTHING about fishing; she is undeterred… Still fresh Mahi Mahi is very, very nice. I’ll just finish by saying that I was given very short notice that the mate wanted a fishing rod holder attached to the pushpit. None were available in Cab0oVerde, so improvisation has resulted in her ‘rod holder’ being a spare piece of toilet hose…

ps day 5 ended at 1700 GMT, we are now in day 6.