Sunday, 11 December, 07.00
Strongbowofbosham
Sun 11 Dec 2022 07:41
We’re now 200 miles to St Lucia, 118 to Barbados. Our gift of 70 litres out in the Atlantic and our eking out the diesel now looks as though we have the diesel reserve to bypass Barbados and head direct to St Lucia. The nasty Atlantic low, somewhere up level with the Azores has now drifted away and later today we should get light NE winds and by the time we reach St Lucia a return to easterly trade winds.
A waning full moon is now directly overhead, the Plough is visible north of us but the North Star is hidden in haze. Derek has taken sun sights each day to take home to retrospectively plot our positions as part of his Ocean Skipper qualifications. When you’ve got GPS on board using the sextant and then work through the complexities of plotting a position on a chart using Almanac tables is a big ask, when even moving around the boat takes care. However taking sunslights and using then a sextant App is a real, pragmatic back up, if all electrics go wrong.
We spoke to a British yacht yesterday, Zoe, and their service batteries had been fried and we’re now running everything off their engine battery, so electrics going wrong is always a back ground possibility. Our solar panels and wind charger have almost kept up with our heavy power usage (Autopilot, fridge, chart plotters, etc), especially when there is enough wind to kick in the D400 wind unit, that puts out an impressive amount of power.
Enough ‘on watch’, sitting in the cockpit musings. Back to the night job, 3 hours to day break.
13:31.68N 057:34.38W