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Exody - Day 5 - November 13th - In the Groove



A quiet day with up to 17 knot winds almost directly behind us - always a challenge and one we'll need to get used to for the rest of the ARC and beyond! Exody continues to be relatively happy with her genny out unpoled and making 5+ knots with the old Aries (at least 15 years more senior than the boat) doing a grand job keeping us on course relative to the wind. But maybe we need more sail up for increased boat speed - we have twin paired jibs and associated poles on board to try but somehow have not got around to setting things up! Its certainly a great relief to have the main tidily packed away and not to be worrying about unintentional gybes as we bowl along.

We sailed all day only running the engine twice to ensure the fridge had enough volts - first time we discovered that running the engine in neutral (ie to avoid ARC penalties) slows us down by more than half a knot as it releases the locked folding prop from its 'sailing efficient' feathered position- too technical for some! In the evening I deployed the towing generator as an alternative to keep the beers cool and also to make sure we have tried it out properly before the Atlantic.

Agnes gave Marian a fishing lesson - more focused on handling and setting up the gear in the first instance but as soon as the fresh protein runs out she promises me she'll be on the case! There is also much focus on fishing during the informal part of the daily radio net.

We took the first of 6 water samples for a Microplastics project that ARC are supporting - 5 more to go- every 2/3 days en route to St Lucia.

This is the first day we have seen no other boats and very little sealife other than a handful of early morning dolphins.

Masterchef contender tonight was Marian (mate) with lamb tagine on a bed of rice.

Looks like we are likely to arrive in Mindelo, Sao Vicente in the middle of the night on Saturday and only a few hours before the organised trip across to Santa Antao - here's hoping the ARC yellowshirts will still be up and around to receive us since we'll have missed the Mindelo welcome scheduled for 18.15.


Peter (Skipper)


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