We are sailing !
Rik
Tue 26 Sep 2023 15:01
Yesterday afternoon we had a more favourable breeze and were able to get the code zero out for a few hours before dark, however we still had to run a few revs on the engine to maintain a reasonable speed.
Then ! After 3 days of motoring we woke up this morning to 15 knots from behind and quickly got the spinnaker up and switched the engines off. When I say quickly, it probably took us 20 minutes, but once it was up it was beautiful. The wind has picked up a little in the last half hour and we are now cranking along between 7 and 9 knots.
The swell is getting larger and more defined, Simon the weather router says it shouldn’t increase to more than two metres, we are hoping he is correct!
Now that we are sailing, we are going faster (and saving fuel), which gives us a bit of a dilemma!! If we can maintain 6.9 knots between here and Las Palmas we could make it before nightfall tomorrow. We wouldn’t want to enter a strange port in the dark so we need to be sure we can get there otherwise we should slow down to 5 knots and arrive the following morning, or alternatively we could divert to Lanzarote which is 70 miles closer and spend a day and night there and do the last 95 miles as a final overnight sail to Las Palmas. To add to the complication we won’t fly the spinnaker overnight with only two crew awake, but we could motor a bit faster with the fuel we have saved today. The wind forecast for tomorrow is similar if not a little stronger than today So it should be doable, but remember, Sod and Murphy were both sailors.
Watch this space !!
Btw we caught another tuna yesterday but let him go as most of his mate is still in the freezer.