Atlantic Crossing Day 6  - Saturday 4^th  March 2023

At the end of day 6 (1630 ships time today) we had covered another 140NM in the last 24 hours. Not bad going considering that the Duogen gets covered in weed far too easily, causing drag. Although it did maintain charge for us last night. The wind has gone fairly light now (the swell hasn’t, sadly), so we’ll have to see how we get on tonight. We are bringing the Duogen up four times a day on average to clear it, but in doing so, the C bracket that holds the unit in position has become dislodged and it now spins around the stainless bar that it clamps around – it isn’t supposed to do that, but the Duogen is a heavy piece of equipment and it is difficult to work with on a swelly open ocean. We have spoken to the Duogen spirits and told them that if it can hold up until St Lucia then it can have all the attention that it needs and be a priority.

Last night was a fairly calm night, although the air was quite moist and it is still not very warm on deck in the middle of the night. My 0500 to 0800 watch saw a brief period of threatening cloud and then as the sun rose and I saw the amount of weed on the Duogen, I decided to recover it whilst the mate was asleep. This resulted in one of the retrieving lines (we have two) wrapping itself around its propeller. It was easily sorted out, but I did feel a little envy that the mate was still asleep whilst I was balancing on the stern fiddling around with something that shouldn’t need fiddling around with – damn Sargassso weed!

I went off watch at 0800 and when I got back on deck just before 1000, I could see that the mate was not happy. The swell had built and the boat was rolling around a little too much. This seems to be a recurring theme as the beam on swell from the systems to north of us play their games with the diurnal patterns here in the tropics. Things soon settled down and I’d decided to boom out the genoa to leeward some days ago when we could easily do it. This seemed a good time, so after an hour, we rigged up a boom preventer line, attached a block to the boom end, run a spinnaker sheet through it to the clew of the genoa and we were very pleased with the results – no more slatting around of the genoa/forestay/backstay in the swell, just a stabilised sail. So we now have our number 4 jib poled out to windward and the genoa boomed out to leeward. All with lines and sheets that enable us to control the whole shebang from the cockpit. We are hoping that this set up will be good for days, if not for all the run into Rodney Bay.  The only issue might be the amount of time it’ll take to de-rig it so we can get to the anchor locker. I say that as we’ll probably anchor for a night or two before heading into the marina there. I have contacted the marina and they are expecting us, but after a big sail sometimes it’s just best to drop the hook and have a rest (the mate has enough gin onboard to enable her to do so).

Other than that, today has been sunny and hot. Well it’s hot until 1600 ship’s time as then the sun goes over the sails and we are in shade in the cockpit. We enjoyed a sea water shower again – we’re getting quite adept at this. Until we get our water supply sorted out, we’ll continue with sea water showers. Speaking of water, we are still on the first tank and we have another completely full one. The middle tank (over-treated as the mate said) is still half full or more, but the taste is awful. I must find out what the mate uses to treat the water…

The mate went to make toast a little earlier, but all her Portuguese bread had gone off. My bread is fine despite my own Portuguese being insufficient for the strain being put upon it in the shop – I just ordered something that looked like it might last a while (I’ll have to share it now). (Or I might even make my own bread! Mate).

We’ve just got some weather info that says the next day or two will be light winds, but the good news is that the swell will calm down to about a meter and a half or less (which is nothing). So the next couple of days may be slow going, but who knows, the mate might get her fishing rod out. Speaking of which, if flying fish offer themselves to us on deck every day, as they do, why, I asked the mate, can’t we just fry them up and eat them instead of actually fishing? I’m waiting for an answer – I’ll let you know…

p.s. Planetary correction… In identifying the planets we were steering for in yesterday’s blog, I used my Celestial Chart tea towel! Having employed my phone app I have now identified them as Jupiter and Venus.