Atlantic Crossing Day 7  - Sunday 5^th  March 2023

Last night was calm and pleasant, enough wind to keep moving above 5 knots, a clear and beautiful sky and a good moon to guide our way. We both slept better than we have been doing and all in all, we enjoyed one of the finest evenings we’ve had on-board, at sea.

This morning, on my watch, it started getting light at 0630 and glancing at the duogen the sight before me confirmed the sluggish noise I’d heard it making for some hours. Yes, Sargasso weed and plenty of it; looking further out I could see the whole Atlantic surrounding us was covered with said weed. I took some photographs which we’ll post later (when we have non satellite coms), but it was more like sailing through a farmer’s field than an ocean.

Back to the duogen, last night we’d identified that the locking pin that locks the unit in position when in wind mode had sheared and was stopping the duogen rotating freely in water mode, this, in turn, had an effect on turning the C bracket on the pushpit – all not good news. However, all we had to do was push the sheared off pin (bolt actually) further into the unit or drill it a bit and it would all  then rotate freely as it should. I decided that screwing in a bolt on top of it would push the sheared part further in. So, at first light this morning off I went to do just that. All went well until when extracting the bolt I’d used to push the other one through, itself sheared off. Looking at it, I could see that the newly sheared bolt wasn’t a tight fit and it would be easy enough to get out if it could be prised in some way. The next development came from an unexpected quarter in that the mate, who was then up, arrived with some tweezers. Now, I’m quite used to seeing the mate with tweezers and I started to think that this was strange time for ‘personal care’ however, she poked them into the duogen C bracket and popped out the newly sheared bolt with ease. So we now have a duogen which rotates freely and would work perfectly (except it needs a new bolt of some sort for wind mode now, but that doesn’t bother me) sadly though, there is too much weed for it to operate. Also, as we’ve mentioned before, it slows us down with all the weed it drags along. So much so, that the last 24 hour run was only 130NM – OK not too bad I suppose as the winds have been on the lighter side (14 knots give or take a couple). Even if I’ve lost you with all the above, I’m sure you get the gist…

Today has been beautifully sunny and hot. The solar panels have provided power for all on-board systems (but no more, so we still have a deficit to make up) but we’ve both really enjoyed today. The sea has been pretty calm we’ve been well rested and we’ve done more relaxing in the cockpit reading. We’ve also taken a couple of sun sights for a position fix (results to follow). Tonight’s weather  is forecast to be similar to last night, so we should sleep well again, although the next 24 hours run is likely to be slow-ish as the winds are light again.

As for our power issue, we’ve decided to use the duogen and raise and clean the weed off at every watch change. It may not provide the power it should but anything is better than nothing. At the moment, it appears that the weed is a little less, but it often does seem to be like that – until you drop the duogen in!

Happy news is that I think we’ll be able to declare half way tomorrow. The mate already has her gin in the fridge, ready to celebrate – but that’s tomorrow’s news…

Finally, we’ve had a comment that we were heading the wrong way! I can understand that, as over these distances using Mercator charts would show our route as a nonsense, but on our ocean Gnomonic chart, we can assure everyone that we are heading the right way on the great circle route; and anyway, even if we weren’t the swell would have dictated our course over the last few days.