Walkabout - Walkabout Time - In a World of our Own - Day6 Mindelo to Grenada

N12:02.9 W37:05.7

Our clocks went back yesterday - no act of Parliament required. We have taken the practical decision to change our clocks by minus 1hour every 10 degrees of longitude that we cross. This has 2 benefits - it means that sun rise and sun set occur at ‘normal’ times. It also means that we won’t arrive in Grenada with ‘jet lag’ as we are on a different time zone. We will be on Grenada time for the last couple of days. But does mean that things get a bit confusing with the time. We keep 2 specific clocks on UST (GMT for us Brits) - the brass ships clock on the wall, and the chart plotter. Our watches are now on ‘Walkabout Time’, which is currently 2 hours behind UST.

Our light winds and tricky decisions continue. Our average speed since the start has dropped to 5.9 knots. We have headed south to try and find some wind. Sailing with full main and G1.

We started the night shifts anticipating a fairly quiet, straight forward night. That turned out not to be the case. We had problems getting the Hydrovane to steer reliably, and our speeds was poor. I put it down to veering about all over the place. Traci looked over the back and saw that the Hydrovane rudder was completely clogged with seaweed (think it is sargasso weed - whatever it is, it is bloody tough stuff). This was the problem. We tried getting it off with the boat hook, but that was impossible. The only solution was to stop the boat and let it fall off. So around midnight we furled the G1 and rounded up to the wind - a great raft of stuff appeared in the water - having dropped off the Hydrovane rudder the main rudder and the keel. Hoorah - so at least we can get going again and steer the boat properly. But the joy was short-lived. Within a few minutes we had started collecting weed on the Hydrovane rudder again. And so went the night - battling weed and having to stop the boat to get it off. I presume this could be a battle we face until Grenada - very frustrating.

We like getting messages - Penny, Joan and Emily - it has been great to get your texts, thank you so much!! Anybody else can chip in if you fancy - ask us a question and we will aim to answer in the following day update. Ade & Bev and ourselves are like teenagers, the amount of texts that go between us - thanks.

Still no fish. We keep hearing of people who have caught things - not us. Just more weed.

For dinner last night we ordered in - Pizza in a flash - just like Domino’s.

That’s all - got to stop the boat again…

A&Txxx