Friday, 12 May 2023, 11.00

Strongbowofbosham
Sat 13 May 2023 00:42
We started Thursday with 3 hours of heavy rain with poor visibility as the rain squall moved over us. It was not an aggressive squall but gave us useful stronger winds aft of us. The rain cleared and we slowed but kept moving at 5 to 6 Kn, we headed east to put distance between us to head winds our west with the objective of moving nearer to clockwise circulating high. This resulted in us motoring into a wind hole between the two weather systems. Net result was motor sailing with a tiny triangle of main as more seams had opened. The wind picked up in the evening and we returned to heading ENE at a fair pace.

Peter Sanders the sail maker is as gutted as us as to why the stitching has failed and has organised a sail maker in Punta Delgada to repair and suss out why.

This morning the sea was back to flat with a very light breeze from the SW so we motored, unrolling the Genoa when the breeze picked up and then rolling it away again as the wind died. We used this easy spell to make bread (sun dried tomatoes and Parmesan cheese loaf), change the water maker filter, as the water was beginning to taste unpleasant and topped up the port diesel tank up. We’ve motored 50 hours so far on low revs and added 40 litres but maybe could have added 50-55. By motoring at about 1600 revs we’ve reduced fuel consumption from 4-5 litres an hour at 2300 revs to less than 1.5 litre/hour. We have 360 litres in the tanks and still 140 litres in jerry cans. It looks as though we have a good reserve of diesel, needed as this passage is demanding a fair amount of motoring. For the East-West crossing we carried 50 litres in jerry cans. For this trip we have 160 litres in cans.

We are all reading books to pass the time. Maggy has read Tom Sawyer, Paul is tucked into the draft of Stu’s book, ‘Road to Kona’ and even the skipper, who is a non reader of fiction and a lazy reader altogether, has got lost in a audio book of Treasure Island (audio books have suddenly opened up a new world of pleasure for the wrinkly - second childhood of being read to!)

It’s hot again. What will unfold today?

27 02.96N 56 54.84W