13:00 UTC Friday Nov. 13, 2015Position: 19.961055N, 23.531290W
SLOW PROGRESS IN POOR WINDS!!
we covered 110.3nm in the last 24 hours (avg. 4.596kt), once again our worst day so far.
The wind dropped to below 10knot at nightfall last night and even with the gennaker up the speed dropped dramatically, sometimes going down to just above 3 knots. Good news: the swell has virtually flattened and the boat is running smoothly with very little rolling motion. We tried everything to improve speed, like adding some limited mainsail to collect the air in the gap between the two sails and even gull-winging out the full mainsail on the other side. All this did extremely little to improve the speed so we decided to let our power house – the gennaker – do its thing undisturbed. The wind came from NNE most of the time, the direct route to Mindelo putting the wind directly to stern. We have been asked why we zig-zag and don´t head directy for the destination, and whether we were not aware that the hypothenuse is shorter than the two cathetes (that question could only have been posed by a math teacher). Well, this might be a good point if you had a spinnaker (very difficult to handle) or a "Parasailor" (which we do not have since it costs over €20,000 and will never be used in the Caribbean). So we had long ago decided that we wanted to have a champagne cruise. This meant not getting there first, but in the best comfort.
talking of which:
tea yesterday: orange cake with coffee or rooibos tea as desired
sundowners: George’s first attempt at a Mojekajito – a project still in progress
dinner yesterday: porc au pruneau with a 2013 de Grendel Sauvignon Blanc
desert yesterday: fruit salad followed by chocolate
breakfast today: freshly baked multi grain wellness bread with assorted spreads
lunch today: fresh oven baked pizza in 3 different varieties
starters tonight Dorado Sushimi
dinner tonight: pan fried freshly caught Dorado au limon
you might ask :
WHY NO TUNA?
Klaus