Wow, we are all totally confused about what day it is
and how many days we have been at sea, but it really doesn't matter as long as
the boat is making progress, the crew are well fed and nothing has been broken,
human or mechanical!
We have not used the engine at all for over 48 hours
which is a relief. Thursday and Friday saw us really picking up the pace, going
at 7+ knots on a beam reach. The wind is now behind us as we goose wing towards
the trade winds. We have come a long way south, to within 150 miles of the Cape
Verde Islands, to avoid the strong winds in the north.
Yesterday morning we saw three non ARC yachts, all
passing close to us, but not showing on AIS. It is really difficult to judge
their course and their speed and we have to resort to traditional navigation
with the hand bearing compass to see if they are approaching too close. We did
make a course adjustment for one of the yachts and think that the other two
changed course to go behind us. It is much easier to do this by day but oh so
much easier to use AIS. It is difficult to understand, in the age of technology,
why an ocean going yacht would not use AIS. It has made sailing so much easier
especially at night and one feels a lot safer with the ability to see and be
seen on the chart plotter. These yachts are a reminder not to forget
to keep a good visual lookout and to teach the crew how to use a hand bearing
compass as it is not a requirement for yachts to have AIS and additionally it
may malfunction.
One night later and we are sailing in the company of
three ARC yachts all clearly seen by their navigation lights and on AIS. Usually
the fleet is very spread out by this stage but the weather patterns have pushed
most of the yachts on a southerly path towards the Cape Verde Islands. We are
impressed by the speed of many of the smaller yachts, it has to be said that our
progress has been sedate rather than scintillating.
The weather is definitely getting warmer. We have
swapped out of jeans and fleeces into shorts and fleeces for the night watches.
As a North Sea sailing family we could never imagine sailing in shorts and
t-shirts at night but it will happen soon.
We have passed a number of significant milestones
today:
We are now 26 degrees west
We believe that we are 25% of the way through our
journey and in fact have now travelled 850 miles.
Therefore a celebration was needed and for breakfast we
had pancakes with banana and chocolate sauce.
The butter update: it has still only passed the
skipper's test but we are definitely headed west, directly at St Lucia. The
result of our minor scientific enterprise is that there needs to be a more
precise definition for when the butter has melted and stringent criteria for
size, shape, weight and type of butter.
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