Position:  15.34.13N; 49.17.82W

 

At last in trade winds with sunshine to boot.  The continuous torrential downpours of 48 hours ago now seem to be behind us and last night we each had a short sharp burst of 10 minutes or so – but we seem to be out from the wind shear that was causing all the problems.  The barometer has risen slightly, but not so much as to give us confidence that it wont start all over again!

 

With all of the rain we have had the autopilot has got wet and now so has been playing up.  That actually is a euphemism for it not working.  As we now bowl along at 7+knots with twin headsails up we are taking the opportunity to dry out some of the cushions (at least their latest soaking has been fresh water) and we’ll also see if we can dry out the autopilot.  Manual steering between three of us has proved to be pretty draining.

 

We have the second headsail boomed out using the dual luff groove on the headfoil to keep it in place.  That enables us to go much closer downwind and maintain speed.  Getting it up was a bit of a pain, so we may reckon that it has to come down before nightfall.  Still no point in carrying the main as this provides a better balanced rig – however we’ll probably re-assess before the day is out.  Still looking for an opportunity to get the big spinnaker out – but conditions are a little boisterous for that.

 

Domestically we are doing well. We have nearly run out of lemons (unlikely to last the last few days), which is serious for the afternoon tea mix of Earl Grey and Darjeeling and critical for the gin & tonic shortly thereafter.  Tim left his digestive biscuits out in the rain in the cockpit last night, which ended up looking as though we had had a visit from an incontinent labrador.  His pennance is that he is making (I think) bread rolls.  we shall see.

 

Under 700 miles to run now and so we are expecting to get there over the weekend.

 

pip pip