We are now in the tropics!  We crossed the Tropic of Cancer yesterday.   Celebration on board, with Virgin Marys all round, and even a crisp or two.  Music playing, "Gone Fishing" by Chris Rea, because Ben had another go with a rod, this time using a red lure to seduce those glitzy mid-Atlantic types.  The calls from some of the crew for sushi had been getting feral.  This time he got a bite but the fish got suspicious and sloped off, so no sushi.    But we were doing about 8 knots at the time with a heavy following swell, so maybe it was for the best.  We will try again when the sea is not so rough.

 

 

Today we are half way across, 1,400 nautical miles covered, and will be having a party at lunchtime.

 

Very starry at times last night with no moon and the Milky Way right across the sky.  We now have the Southern Cross low in the sky, and there were several shooting stars, including a big one one of about 75 deg of arc,

 

 

 

 

Some of you chaps might be wondering how we boaties manage for water for all

this time on the undrinkable briny.  If you are interested, read on.  We

have 1,000 litres of capacity in our water tanks, which were full when we

left Lanzarote.  We have a reverse osmosis water maker on board, which can

make about 300 litres of fresh water from sea water over a 4 hour period,

which is the amount of time we run the generator each day (it also recharges

the batteries).  This 300 litres goes into the tanks for washing etc, and

also for drinking.  This is a separate takeoff from the tanks into an

advanced microfilter system which takes out all nasties, and comes out of a

separate tap in the galley.

 

In addition we have two emergency backups:

 

1) Big bottles of fresh mineral water in the dinghy, which is the big item strapped down

on the foredeck.  This totals about 140 litres.  Every now and then we

decant one of these bottles into smaller ones and refill the big bottle

with water maker water.   Fresh water is somewhat nicer than water-maker

water (and pretty well all water on the island of Lanzarote is made from sea

water in the first place)

 

2) A hand water-maker intended for our lifeboat.  This can pump out 5 litres

per hour (or 10 litres if you are Jean-Claude van Damme)

 

Not bad eh?  We use quite a lot of the stuff - washing up, cooking, flush

loos (fresh water), and - wait for it - fresh water showers.

 

Back in the day the only fresh source will have been rainwater, and decks

were set up so that rainwater could be diverted to run the tanks.  We have had

no significant rain for 8 days, but as I type this morning we had a heavy

squall like a carwash which would have given a good few days'  top-up if we were reliant on

rain.

 

 

William Boyd “Any Human Heart” 2002

 

More news later.....

 

Best wishes to all at MCS

Greetings to all the saints at WCC