Day 8

Had a good day’s sail with reasonable winds (more than expected) and an increasing positive current helping us along.  Wind started to die around 6pm and heard from another boat on SSB that they had no wind all day, so thinking the doldrums were nigh, we put on the engine.  The heavens opened and rain like you’ve never seen (unless you live in Scotland)  came down for about 3 hours.  Around 7pm the wind came out of the north east and started to blow old boots. (A gybe needed). In the pitch black dark, Matt went out in the nuddy to switch the main sail over (I reckon he just wanted an excuse to get out of having a shower today).  We got the main gybed and rolled way the headsail as too dangerous to gybe the pole, but within another hour the wind had dropped to nothing again so on went the engine.  I went to bed.  Another hour and Matt came to wake me to put the main away and to put the genoa out on the pole– the wind had gone back round to the southeast.  We sailed like that under headsail only for the rest of the night doing 7-9k in calm, quiet conditions with the wind around 20 knots and positive current of around 1.5 to 2 knots.

In the early hours we were treated to an electrical storm – bolts of lightning hitting the water, arcs in the sky – another full monty!  It lasted around 3 hours.  Defcon 2 – into the oven went the mini computer, the hand held radio and a GPS.

It’s all settled down again now – we’re still sailing with just the genoa poled out and expect the wind to go round the north east later today or this evening, hopefully indicating we’ve transitioned into the NE trades.  We are around 65 miles off the Brazilian coast and are getting butterflies and other bugs flying around us!

Date and time: 24th Feb 2016; 0800 GMT

24 hours distance:   180nm

Position: S03:21:77 W037:11:99