Amokura - Day 5 - Racing to the finish

The wind had eased sufficiently to allow us to unearth our 'secret weapon' the parasail from the bow locker. The parasailor is a fantastic downwind sail,  beautifully striped black, gold and sea-blue and has a wing across the middle, like an actual parachute to help keep the sail set. Apart from being more photogenic, Amokura started a surging along confidently towards Mindelo, less than 100 miles away, and, as her speed picked up, we noticed the lights of several other yachts disappearing behind us. Very exciting!
Last night was warm enough for shorts and teeshirt on watch - welcome to the Tropics and a blissful escape from November in the UK! It's been idyllic living in a bubble shielded from technology and the distractions of social media, although I was over the moon when I downloaded a long-awaited email from home via Iridium Go saying my daughter had passed her driving test. Well done Lucy from everyone on board!

Another rude awakening at 0630 this morning when the loud autohelm alarm went off and frantic calls of 'help help!' from Vicky. We all shot out of our bunks, we had practised this with yesterday's dawn panic but it is no easy feat, Mark and I are in the stern quarter cabin and sleeping feet first in the bunk wedged together like sardines with a duvet down the middle to stop us rolling into one another. He shimmied down to the foot end of the  bunk, performed a 180 turn on his bottom then scooted back down and launched himself onto the cabin floor. He then took 3 attempts to put his life jacket on the right way! Nic meanwhile had managed to extract himself from behind his lee-cloth in the other stern cabin.
We came on deck to find Vicky wrestling with the helm. She'd popped below to make a cup of coffee and the autohelm chose that moment to switch itself off so the boat rapidly went off course accelerating up into the wind and heeling over! Once re-engaged, the autopilot then repeated the same trick 3 times, announcing it couldn't pick up the rudder sensor. The old IT wheeze of switching everything off and then on again was then attempted and....fingers crossed...seemed to work. Another thing for the Raymarine engineer to look at in port, however, as we think maybe a loose connection!

Shortly after the autohelm shenanigans we managed to catch another fish! We think he's a bream, and meaty enough to make a good meal this evening.

Ran the generator again this morning to charge the batteries and use the watermaker.  It unfortunately has a tendency to overheat and was up to 145 degrees c at one point - not good! We switched it off. The problem was traced to a broken impeller with one of the 6 fins missing, we could not find it loose in the engine room so suspect it has probably been gobbled up by the generator and is lodged somewhere inside! Let's hope it's not critical.
Our list of jobs to look at in port is growing, but it has been a benefit to use this leg down to Cape Verdes to identify and solve any issues before the actual crossing.

Nic and Vicky climbed into the horrifically hot engine room and changed the impeller so generator up and running again and chugging along happily as I write. Keeping everything crossed and enjoying the last few hours of sailing, all being well we should arrive in the early hours of Sat morning.

Miles run in last 24hrs - 148 nm
Miles to go as at 1300 today - 78 nm
Ave speed - 6.2kts

Signing off..

Liz Brigstocke