Atlantic Crossing Day 9  - Tuesday 7^th March 2023

We are becalmed! Last night, the wind averaged around 7 knots – unbelievably just enough to keep Stargazer moving around 3 knots SOG, although probably half a knot of that was due to the north equatorial current. Our distance run in the last 24 hours had been a ‘pitiful’ 80NM. On a good note, 80NM is better than nothing and the sea has been calm, with only a little swell from the north. The day has been spectacularly warm, the colour of the ocean is a wonderful deep blue (no wonder this is called blue water cruising). Also, the mate caught a fish – more on that later.

Given that we have some 900NM still to go and Stargazer carries only 130 litres of diesel in her main tank (110 left) and an additional 60 litres in cans our total fuel is now some 170 litres. At 2.5 litres per  hour, this is nowhere near enough to motor us to the Caribbean. Not only that, we have to conserve diesel for a daily charge up of the batteries given the duogen vs Sargasso weed situation. So what’s to be done? We spent all morning changing sails and getting our lovely Banks’ spinnaker ready, only to see the breeze fall to below 4 knots. The latest grib file shows little wind all the way through to Friday which is as far as the forecast goes. So we’ll have to think of a plan, which will almost be some sensible motoring in the mornings before the sun comes up to charge the batteries (and keep the mates gin cool in the fridge). Then the solar panels can handle the battery charging during the day and we’ll take what wind we get. Maybe another hours motoring before watches start and then drift through the night (good for sleeping at least). Our water supplies are such that we have sufficient for 8 to 10 days, without watermaker water, which we’ll start with soon. Food is no problem onboard apart from some repetitive boringness, but ‘so what’.

The subject of food means I can tell you about the mate’s fishing. Well, no luck yesterday, but despite laughter from me, as soon as her rod went in today she caught a fish (literally within two minutes). She thought it looked a little small and was about to throw it back, when her lure hook (or whatever they are called) proved too difficult to remove, so she decided to use some of her best gin to put the poor fish out of its misery. Luckily, after filleting, there seems to be plenty of fish and so we will enjoy it very much, after it was so kind as to bit the mate’s hook. Sadly the mate isn’t sure what it is, but having consulted her fish book, it looks like a Jack to me. After such an effort, the mate, who suffers from excess heat has had to lie down to recover from her fishing activities. Maybe, I suggested, that we fish earlier in the morning before it warms up so much?

Back to Stargazer. The engine anti syphon valve continues to play up a bit. I can deal with it, it’s just another hassle that you don’t really need. I’ve attempted a slight modification today, which may have merit but if not then no real problem apart from that I don’t like salt water dribbling out of it onto the engine gear casing so I’ve rigged something up to hopefully deal with that. We’ll see…

The next 24 hours run is likely  to be no better in distance covered, but we are now rigged up so that when breeze does arrive, we can either pole out headsails or use our spinnaker to suit what shows up.

So, given our diesel capacity, distance to go and weather forecast, we’ve decided to enjoy things as best we can. Today, we dropped the swimming ladder and after tying a line to ourselves (one at a time of course) we went swimming off the back of the boat (this counts as our shower too). Immersing oneself in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, looking along the waterline of a boat you’ve worked so hard to prepare- in the blazing sun is something we won’t easily forget.

The mate would like to add that she stopped taking seasickness pills yesterday (because she forgot) and was doing OK until landing and filleting the fish  - this contributed to her needing to lie down afterwards. OK I said, let’s fish earlier and take your seasickness tablet too…