Day 5

The wind (around 20 – 25 knots) continued all day from the south east.  We had a swell of around 2 – 3 m so were rocking and rolling quite a bit.  The leaden skies cleared and clouds came and went for most of the day.  Mid afternoon we put the pole out again in anticipation of the wind going more to the east later in the night.  At around 7pm we were goose-winged doing over 10 knots with the positive current of around 1.5 knots even though still had 4 reefs in the main.  Too much for the night declared Jean!  So we rolled away the genoa and sailed with the reefed main during the night – still making around 7.5 – 8 knots.

This morning the wind has abated a bit but we still have the large swell so are still rocking and rolling.  Bit more of a blue sky.  We have just poled the genoa out again.  Yesterdays gribs showed the wind getting lighter today so we’ll see what happens…

The dreaded volts have been low, requiring extra use of generator at night to keep up. Checked SG of all house batteries and found a dud cell on two of the four batteries. Have now re-configured down to two. This gives us much improved voltage but halves the Ah capacity. So moved all stock from fridge to freezer and turned fridge off. Situation much improved last night

Small pre-cooked dinner last night but we’re still munching away at the French sticks so probably not losing any of that weight we put on over the last few weeks. You’d think that with no sundowners (and hence no snacks) the weight would be falling off us!  One thing though - these seas sure do give your internal organs a workout when you’re lying down!

Many more ships now on the AIS but still no wildlife sightings.  All appears well on the daily check but no flying fish.

Date and time: 25th October 09.30 local (GMT + 4 hrs) 

Position:  S27:32:228 E040:59:292

24 hours distance:   194nm