Albatross - YB Connect Message from Fernando Assens

Nov 25th - 6th Day at Sea

All is well. It has been raining intermittently for the last 24 hours. Today at 5:00 am, when I was on duty, we had strong showers for nearly an hour. Wind has been fairly constant from the east at 14-18 knots, peaking occasionally to 21 knts. We continue going west on the narrow band between the Azores high and the low pressure south of us. We download daily wind grids to iNavX on the iPad with our Iridum phone using XGate. It appears we will continue on this route for at least one more day.

Going west with strong easterly winds, we are able to pick up some speed. For a few hours, when the wind was over 20 knots, we were going at over 8 knots. Chuck claims he set the record at 9.2 knots. Why is it that all feats of nautical lore never have more than one witness?

On AIS we see several other boats on the same route than us. Today we had a nice chat with the crew of Charisma, a German flagged Swan 441. It's a beautiful boat. They are doing well, are in good spirits, and claim to be eating well!

They told us that their boat has crossed the Atlantic five times and, with typical German directness, asked for our weight, and volunteered theirs (10.5 tons). This being our first crossing, we are new to high seas etiquette, and did not have our weight handy. We promised to let them know on our next chat.

We are flying the main sail with two reefs and a full jib. Charisma is flying two jibs "wing on wing", and no main sail. That rig allows them to take a more direct route downwind, although it makes a Swan look more like a duck.

Rain during the afternoon was coming and going. It starts, we run inside to gear up, come out all dressed and the rain stops. Remove the foul weather gear, it rains again! But I managed to take advantage of the rain this afternoon, harnessed myself on deck, and took a shower. It felt really good!

Still no sea life around us. We have not sighted any dolphin or birds lately, although apparently, another boat doing the crossing had a close encounter with a whale.

We are all getting used to the motion and are back to reading and writing when off duty. My ability to listen to music is fairly limited. Now that I am "off grid" Apple Music does not work. In retrospect, I should have asked my musical son, Marc, to download several hours of songs into my iPhone.

We continue to eat well (hopefully as well of our new German friends!). Today we had the usual cereals for breakfast, avocado and tomato on toasted multigrain bread for lunch, and hamburgers for dinner.

An equipment update. The joy and pride of Albatross, an Italian porcelain electric toilet, has stopped working. It has two beautiful switches, one you press before using it to dispense water on the bowl, and the #2 switch, which you press after completing the #2 business.

Well, the #2 switch no longer flushes out, and we are back to the ancient mariner ritual of a plastic bucket. James and Kevin have so far spent 3 1/2 hours troubleshooting the problem. Started by looking at fuses and now trying to take apart the bowl to reach the macerator pump. I will keep you updated, but if any of the readers of this blog is an expert in Italian marine toilets please do not hesitate to email with advice!
--
Transmitted by Fernando Assens using YB Connect (www.ybtracking.com)