Day 2
Quesera
Mon 24 Nov 2008 16:54
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Made a good average speed of 5.5kts almost due
south and then, having cleared the wind shadow of the island, turned
towards the Cape Verde islands. We are taking the South route to avoid the low
pressure system further north as much as we can. Wind dropped during the
afternoon to about 10 kts, rather less than the boat enjoys! The strange thing
is that we can hardly see any other of the 220 participants - just 3 on various
horizons. Hope we are going the right way!
However, two great successes. Firstly,the DuoGen (a
device which can either operate as a windmill or with different blades be towed
as as a generator) has been in tow mode all night and day and kept our
battery power stable allowing us to use the autohelm all night without running
out of power.We supplement during the day with a solar panel.
Secondly, we used our water maker to make 70 lts of
water to refill our main tank. Strange how one can be so enthused by this but it
means that two of our main pieces of kit have been used to good
effect!
 Finally we have had our new Parasailor (a type of
spinnacker) up all day. It is really impressive and so far has stabalised the
sailing of the boat with the wind directly behind us magnificently.See the slot
in the middle with the aerofoil in it! In these light winds we shall probably
keep up all night.
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