Leaving Las Palmas and across the Ocean start.
VitaminSea
Ramiro Salom & Blanca Boira
Fri 25 Nov 2022 09:35
Dear Family and Friends.
24th November 22…..50 Nautical Miles from Mauritania Coast, West Africa
I am writing to you from Vitamin Sea on our fourth sailing day since we left Las Palmas. The weather is hotting up as we sail down to the Tropics. I am in the shadow of our bimini in the cockpit only wearing shorts and a lifejacket of course. Nice trade winds at about 16 to 20 knots give the boat a nice speed.
The first two days as we left Las Palmas were rather lively. We had heavy seas with 3 to 5 meters waves and strong winds of around 35 knots. We both of us and the boat copes very well with the conditions and things were looking very positive. On our second day we realised the boat batteries power was going down and the alternator was not able to charge them. Using the multimeter, it showed the alternator was not the fault but it was an issue with those new batteries installed only few days ago. Not having active domestic batteries functioning means that we had to switch off the fridge, the water pump, the water maker and more importantly the navigation lights, the chart plotter, our AIS (automatic identification number) and we decided to leave our satellite on. That made the prospect of three weeks at Sea a bit too tight. We had energy enough to contact the Rally by phone and we decided to divert to Cape Verde for repairs. Fortunately, we had a plan B in place and our automatic pilot is not electricity dependant that means we do not need to be at the wheel which would had being too much for a crew of two. We also have a AA batteries operated hand held VHF with GPS posiioning, we have a paper chart to plot our position. With everything else disconnected we have left the Satellite active and so far the boat batteries are able to sport it.
The boat is sailing beautifully, we are in good spirts, we have plenty on bottled water, we have a gas cooker so we can live conformably onboard.
We received an email from Cape Verde technician saying we will be a priority when we arrive.
We think we will arrive at Mindel on Sunday.
That is the report of our early part of the Atlantic Crossing.
We will keep on sending messages to the blog as things develop further.
So far so good.
Regards
Ramiro