Walkabout - Walkabout - Very far from Land! - Day7 Mindelo to Grenada

N11:56.7 W39:32.3

Today marks a few milestones - we have been at sea for 7 days - our longest ever. We have done 1000NM since we left Mindelo a week ago. Usually we may do this sort of mileage in a whole year!. And 1000NM means that we qualify to join the Ocean Cruising Club! Our application will be in when we get to Grenada, and we will be proud to fly the OCC burgee. I looked at the Atlantic chart this morning to check our distance from land. And we are about as far from land as it is possible to be on this journey. About 850NM to the South American coast. But now we are at the point where the distance to land will start to slowly decrease.

But we are not half way yet. It looks like we will pass through that vague line on the chart tomorrow afternoon/evening. We have it marked on the chart with a waypoint called ‘Steak Dinner’. So that is a really exciting thing to look forward to tomorrow. Hopefully the freezer will have done its job and our steaks will be something to savour.

We sailed most of yesterday with the main and G1. Much discussion/dithering about what our overnight set up should be. Then decided to make the change to BWR in butterfly mode with the windward side poled out, so that we can sail 10-20 degrees off dead down wind. This is the first time we have tried this set up, and it is working well. Hot work all round to get it all set up and make the sail change.

Weed - I think I may have mentioned this - it is starting to really hack me off. We had to stop the boat in the night again to clear the rudders - this time a mixture of weed and fishing net - glad to get rid of that. Stopping the boat is a 15 minute exercise, to adjust course, bring the sails in, use the engine in reverse to bring us to a halt, wait for stuff to drift away, then get the sails set again and get back on course. We lose at least a mile of progress when we need to do it. And the weed is what I am blaming for not having caught any fish - nothing to do with complete incompetence on my part! Within a few minutes of running the line out, the lure gets clogged with weed and is useless. So it needs to come in to remove the weed and then let it out again. And repeat…

We reflected yesterday that it is a month until Christmas Day, what would that normally mean to us and our preparations. This year - it hasn’t entered our heads! It is a different world out here.

No visuals on any other boats in the last 24 hours. Seen 3 at distance on AIS (Pippin, a24e and High Cotton), coming and going, but that is it. We are a long way from anywhere!!

Last nights dinner was pizza again (they needed to be eaten). For lunch we had banana pancakes, which were fab. Looking forward to our steak...