Position 17.24.807N 024.35.914W
Yesterday afternoon we were accompanied by
a large pod of dolphins for quite a long time.
Sat right at the very front of the boat on the bow seats either side was a great
vantage point to watch them swoop and dive across back and forth in front of
the boat. They seemed excited to see us and jumped and dived accelerating across in front of the boat bumping into each other purposely and then swimming in formation giving us a very good display.
Later in the day more came and followed on
the port side of the boat where people were sat making sure they had been
spotted.
The wind has been poor – we have sailed
whenever we can but at times the wind has dropped so low there was no option
but to motor as otherwise we would be stood still particularly as we cannot now
use our best light downwind sail our gennaker due to the halyard breaking a
couple of days ago. We’ve seen a couple of boats in the distance with their
spinnakers up and can see they are sailing at about 5kts. Our genoa just
flapped in the wind and would not take us anywhere.
We have a steering system on the boat that
is linked to some electronics and we can set it to follow a pre-plotted course
or just simply stick to a heading. We
tend to use it just to stick to a heading and adjust direction by increments as we need to if there is wind change. We have had a few instances in
recent weeks where it has with no warning suddenly veered off in another
direction. This happened again last night at about 9pm when it was dark. We
spotted the problem very quickly and then had to stop to check our steering and
electronics as the boat did not seem to want to respond to commands properly.
After an hour or so of checking and resetting we got it going again and it has
been OK since. Another job on the list of things to get looked at shortly.
We now have 39nms to go to Mindelo having
covered 185nms in the last 24 hrs. It’s interesting to see the total miles we
have sailed vs the miles closer to our target each day, we can see we have sailed
many more miles some days due to diverting to find the best wind angle. We cannot yet quite see Mindelo due to the
haze but we know it’s out there in front of us. Our arrival time has come in
substantially as we have made good speed overnight and we should be there at
around 6pm, 5pm Mindelo time as it is UTC -1hr.
We plan to refuel as soon as we arrive if
we can so it’s one less job to do when we leave. We have a berth reserved in
the marina and will radio in when 2 miles out to tell them we are on our way.
After our beautifully prepared and cooked Jamie
Gourmet Burger at lunchtime (no soup today!) we are feeling ready for the last
few hours of the trip and to get ashore this evening to see what awaits us in
Mindelo. We have plans to explore some of the area whilst here – our time was
largely taken up with boat fettling in Las Palmas so we didn’t see much of the
island - se we will make up for it this time. Our electric and pedal power GoCycles have proved fantastic and have been very useful going to the various ARC briefings and chandlers shops for parts together with frequent trips to the Volvo franchise to ensure they came and fixed our engine. They will be charged up ready for action and put to good use again in Mindelo.
Our blog will probably either stop or be
less frequent whilst in Mindelo – we start sailing again for St Lucia (and for
Bamarandi on up to Antigua) on Weds 18th Nov at 1pm.
Everyone on board is fine and enjoying
the passage.