Abraxas - 07/12/13 The 'Trade Winds' have ceased trading

Its been a few days since our last posting but it has been pretty busy and days seem to pass quickly.

 

Our route plan has been to head south from the Canary Islands to below 20N.  This was where we are told that we will hit favourable trade winds and skate our way west under spinnaker.  Well, we are now below 17N and we have been struggling with some light winds and having to work hard to keep a good pace.  The positive thing however is that we are now well in to the tropics and so are enjoying some very nice weather indeed.  Our position in the fleet is currently not as good as those who stayed further north or those that have motored in the lighter winds but we hope to come good with some speed from now on and there is still plenty of ocean to go.

 

We have been at sea for two weeks now and the crew are well settled in to a watch pattern.  The nights consist of keeping the boat on course and up to speed as well as keeping an eye out for commercial shipping, interspersed with periods of light sleep.  The days also have a typical pattern, breakfast, position and weather updates, boat maintenance tasks then followed by fishing, clothes washing and sextant practise.  The day is well rounded off with a crew dinner together, the calmer weather allowing the cooking to be much easier.

 

Yesterday we celebrated St Nicholas Day with our European friends.  With such good weather we were able to set a table on deck and Igor cooked a nice risotto to mark the occasion.  We we even lucky enough to have been given some nice gifts by one of our good friends (Thank you Cor, the chocolate was great!)

 

We are crossing our fingers for ‘slightly’ more wind in the coming days.

 

Stay safe everybody.

 

Paul and the ABRAXAS crew.