Day 7: trying to slow down!
Catacaos
Graham Shaw
Tue 6 Jan 2009 19:55
First of all, I hope everyone enjoyed going back to work yesterday...
Anyway, the weather has conspired to send us sufficiently close to the Cape Verde islands that we can't pass by without stopping. This is much to Pauline's delight, as she has wanted to go there all along (actually I suspect the course steered on her watches may have added to this situation!) I think everyone else will be glad to get ashore as well - it has been quite a lively week. We are aiming for Porto Grande on Ilha da Sao Vincente.
It is nearly teatime and it is starting to get dark. We don't want to make landfall at night - the charts are not very reliable: we already have Ilha Santo Antao on the radar and it is several miles out of position when overlaid on the chart plotter! So we have decided to slow down and make our approach at first light tomorrow. Here we are with fairly light winds, three (deep) reefs in the main and no genoa, and still we are going too fast! We may have to experiment with heaving-to. Not sure if catamarans will do that, but we'll find out!
Right now we have one engine running, and the watermaker going flat out, knowing that we can get more diesel in the islands, but apparently the water is non-potable. Taking advantage of lots of electricity, we have got the new inverter on, charging mobile phones ready for going ashore, and most importantly of all allowing us to have the TV on! Lucas is currently mesmerised by the cartoon "Ratatouille" on the DVD (despite having seen it at least twenty times already!) I'm sure Lorraine will want to watch Mama Mia (for at least the twentieth time), after Lucas has gone to bed.
More in a couple of days about what life is like ashore....
Graham.
P.S. I've just re-read the above before sending - apologies if it's a bit technical for our non-boating readers.