motor sailing
Ocean Science's blog
Glenn Cooper
Thu 9 Oct 2014 17:11
Mostly sunny today, with good visibility all last night, particularly of the full moon which looks splendid through Glenn's gyro-stabilised binoculars. The wind is still from the south and west, so we have shifted our course slightly so we can get the headsail up, as well as the forward main. The boat is heeled over, punching through the Atlantic swell at about 8 knots. We are using more fuel than we expected, and will not be able to reach the Canaries if we have to motor all the way. There is a reasonable chance of sailable wind some time tomorrow; it would be nice to run at 10+ knots with the spinnaker up. Watch this space.
No mutinies, or even moans. The crew are happy with the tuck; the oven is currently on for a beef stew which I made all those months ago. It will go well with the Campo Veijo rioja. Possibly also some basmati rice.
Tim saw a schools of dolphins this morning. They overtook us to port going like the clappers. Sometimes dolphins stop and mess around on the bow wave, but this lot had urgent dolphinny business somewhere south and did not give us a second glance.
Not many other boats around, and so far no fishing boats (although many of these are invisible at night anyway, with no lights and no AIS transponder that we can pick up on the screen).
This blog comes to you courtesy of our satphone - a signal traversing tens of kilometres of space just to tell you these little things.
Yohoho and it is back on deck to see the sunset.