Position:  30:35.6N 53:20.1W

 

A frustrating day – marred by a lack of wind throughout.  We were eventually able to turn the engine off at 1630 – having run it since 2145 the night before.  By that time everyone was getting a bit fed up with the noise and also the amount of fuel we were consuming.  But by this afternoon we were able to put the spinnaker up again in about 4kn of wind and make about 3 knots in vaguely the right direction. 

 

Now the breeze has filled in a little more and we are sailing at about 030 degrees – so about 40 degrees further North than we would like, but we are back up to 5.5kn and it looks like we are eventually heading into some more consistent breezes to the North when maybe we can resume our heading to Azores.

 

Last night was calm and, as the skipper pointed out, “oily” and with poor visibility.  We had one big cargo ship quite near us (about 4 Nm away) but we never saw it.  Maybe he was saving power on his navigation lights...  Apart from that there was a little intermittent lightning away off to the north of us – but no sign of any activities closer by.

 

Life on board is simple – a selection of delicious cakes greets us every day for tea and we have now (nearly) seemingly exhausted Simon’s repertoire for cooking Tuna.  We have nearly finished it – just down to the last few kg – which we’ll probably have for breakfast with our first attempt at yoghurt.  We have been told we can start fishing again tomorrow and he is saying he would like some prawns...

 

The sextant got its second airing today and was rather more successful than the first day.  We got the Lat to within about 7Nm of the GPS – which felt quite good.  Havent yet mastered Harrison’s time piece, so the longitude may have to wait until we get to the Azores.

 

Otherwise lots of reading, sunbathing etc going on. 

 

SS&D