17:51.42N
025:34.65W

 

What three words : overinflated.dallied.honeysuckle

 

(By Steve)

 

Despite what must be a horrifying reputation amongst the fish community of the eastern Atlantic we appear to have become somewhat of an unintended and accidental fishing contraption. Given the sheer vastness of the ocean we find ourselves in, and the absolutely miniscule area of it we currently occupy, if you had asked me prior to this trip what the odds of a flying fish leaping out the water and straight through a 15x15 inch half open hatch in our roof would be, they would have been very unfavourable. Whilst the hatch goal was extremely bizarre, we did find that through the night another fish leaped onto the foredeck and expired. That makes three all together - the first of which managed to wiggle his way back into the sea, and the second two which didn't.

 

During leg one of this trip from the UK to Gran Canaria we tried two different watch systems - the first saw me, Sam, WIll and Andy pair up and Glenn our skipper take the third watch on a three hours on six hours off rotation. We found this exhausting as you never really get a chance to recover. In the second week we did a four on, four off, four on, eight off system which allowed us a longer rest period in between a 12 hour double shift. This worked much better as it gave us a nice amount of sleep but could still be a bit harsh, especially if your two four hour shifts straddled the night period: going to bed at 2am and getting up for a 6am shift was hard work. So between the two legs I spent a long time with my head in a spreadsheet trying to figure out the most optimal system that would have two people on watch at night at any one time but also allow for a much bigger break in between watches. We are now almost one week in and so far it seems to be going really well. Each person does two five hour day watches (one morning and one afternoon) in a five day period, and then we do four hour shifts which overlap by two hours with another person, at night - so your first two hours are with one person, and your second two with someone else. This means you only do one night shift per night, which changes each night, and two day shifts out of every five, and then generally gives a minimum of eight or more hours off afterwards.

 

Our continued southern strategy has taken us within about 40 miles of Cape Verde which we are passing now. Our passage so far has seen us hugging (150 miles or so) the west coast of Western Sahara, then Mauritania, and now almost Senegal. We have now made the big turn and are heading more west which is looking like it will take us across the path of some of those that went west early and which are now heading south to get the winds. Several boats are having to ditch into Cape Verde to refuel having gone west into lighter winds early on, motoring and depleting their fuel reserves too much for the 2,000 or so miles still left to go. About 30 minutes ago we saw one of the ARC yachts crossing our path also heading straight to Cape Verde. It was nice to see another ARC boat, the first we have seen for a few days, but their heading didn't feel right so we got in touch on the radio to say hi and check they were ok. Autopilot issues mean they need to head for repairs; the prospect of hand steering 24/7 for two weeks straight was obviously not very appealing. We wished them speedy repairs and safe onward passage and hopefully we will have a rum with them in St Lucia soon. As we start to sail away from Cape Verde we now sail away from the last land we will be in proximity to until we get to the Caribbean some 2,000 miles away.

 

We are planning to stop in the mid point around 1,000 miles from here to have a swim. Sam is keen to try and make sure we stop on an exact lat and long coordinate so it's easy to find on the grid of a map but I'm not sure it will work out quite that satisfying. The idea of swimming in the mid Atlantic both scares and excites me, which sums up most of this trip. However, Will's science task of sampling and measuring various things in the water has seen the sea temperature recorded  increase by two degrees to 26.3 at the last reading so at least the water will be warm. We will no doubt let you know at the time whether it is or not.

 

Tonight we are flying just the code zero - a sail we normally only fly during the day because it's slightly more complex. But one week in we are feeling confident enough to try some night sailing with it. This is also helping us maintain a good average speed of 6.5 knots more or less. At our current and reasonably sustained rolling 24 hour average speed we should get into St Lucia on the morning of Saturday 9 December.