POSITION REPORT ON MONDAY 5 MARCH 2018 AT 0700

10:13S 23:57W

So far we've done 1,125 miles with 685 miles to go to Jacaré, Brazil. We did 130 miles in the last 24 hours.  We have 10% cloud cover and 8-12 knot ESE winds.  We’re sailing wing-on-wing doing 4 to 5 knots with a 1 metre swell. Here's what we did yesterday and overnight.

4 March 2018   St Helena to Brazil (Day 9)

We passed the 1,000 mile mark this morning, so we “only” have 800 miles to go.  We’ve averaged 5.2 knots over the past 8 days and if we can up that to 5.3 knots, then we should be anchored in the river at Jacaré on the evening of Saturday 10th.  Fingers crossed.

This weather is unbelievable. Today was exactly the same as yesterday – ESE 8-15 knots, fluffy white clouds against a blue sky, sailing wing-on-wing doing 4-6 knots. We still have the 2 metre swell coming from the north.

We spotted half a dozen Portuguese Man of War Jellyfish today.  Above the surface, we can see a six inch long, three inch high “sail” which is a beautiful, light purple colour.  They use this inflated sail to move across the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. They are pretty to look at, but we know that below the surface, tentacles several metres long contain a deadly toxin paralysing any creature that touches them.  I’m on a mission to photograph one, but they are as elusive as Flying fish – I spot one, but by the time that I‘ve grabbed my camera, they’ve disappeared astern.

Glenys has been doing well with her Garbage Management. Any vegetable matter goes overboard for the fishes; tins and glass get consigned to the deep and she cuts up any plastic and compresses it into old 2 litre soft drink bottles, which she has been saving.  After 8 nights at sea, she only has half a carrier bag of garbage and 2½  bottles of plastic bits.

The moon took 2 hours to appear tonight, but it’s still big enough to light the sky, so the rest of the night was lovely.  For the second half of the night we had a 10-15 knot winds, so we made good time.

We must be crossing a major shipping route because ships started to pop up on our AIS today.  It looks like we’ve reached the Great Circle route between Cape of Good Hope and the Caribbean because there’s a steady stream of ships passing within 40 miles of us.  Glenys also passed by the lights of a fishing boat who didn’t have AIS.