Position: 23:57:30N 18:17:90W

Transat Day 3

Urggh – even slower today.  73M on the log.  Interestingly (for me anyway!) the ARC position reporting had us doing 93M yesterday rather than the 82 I had posted, which means we must have had 11 miles of current under us.  Quite useful, but still too scary to extrapolate out our ETA at this stage.

An uneventful 24 hrs; we tried putting the gennaker up but it was not giving us any more speed than our large poled-out genoa.  This afternoon’s activity will be to see if we can put up a second genoa to complement the main & mizzen – she goes best at about 150 degrees off the wind so there is a slot between the mast and the goosewinged genoa.  I suspect it will be futile but we’ve got time to experiment.

My prediction is that if the wind stays this light, then in about 2 or 3 days, there will be a flood of yachts sticking the engine on and making for the Cape Verdes.  I have to say it is quite tempting and if we were not part of the ARC and were with Sarah & the girls, I would definitely call in.  We had a mail from “Walrus”, who are in Mindelo and reported eating lobster on the barbeque, which sounds tempting!

Dolphins kept us company for a couple of hours either side of dawn, langorously surfacing, blowing then diving from one side of the boat to the other.  As I was writing this, Rob just spotted a whale just off our port bow!  There have also been a number of ships, one or two passing quite close.  I suppose this must be a bit of a shipping channel given we are on the rhumb line between the Canaries & the Cape Verdes.  We also watched one light from a yacht fairly close by, slowly go from white, to green, to red, and back to white, slowly receding behind us – I can only assume they were quietly doing pirouettes and the crew were either asleep or struggling with the light winds!

Nutmeg has kept going through the light stuff and we’ve not yet stopped outright, although it has been painfully slow at times, down to 1.5kts in 4kts of breeze.  Luckily the sea is pretty flat, but even so the rig & sails are taking a dreadful pounding as the whole lot slats from side to side.  The solar panels are providing some useful charge and all systems seem to be OK.  I’m going to do a rig and chafe check in a minute.

The radio net today indicated that the fleet are all suffering the same conditions as us, and we are not being left behind particularly, but we need to keep an eye out and if the wind shifts we will gybe onto starboard.  The forecasts indicate going West is bad, but more boats are to our West than our East now and they seem to be doing all right.

Hope all is well with you,

Ollie x