Starblazer - 21/06/2017 – A Happy Day

Tuesday was a ‘Happy’ day on board Starblazer for a number of reasons.

The day dawned bright and sunny and the temperature increased, to the extent
that we were sitting in the cockpit without jumpers on! June is supposed to
be summertime but the temperatures here do not agree. The nights are very
dark with less than 20% of the moon rising a couple of hours before the sun,
they are also cold. At least we have had no rain or squalls. The seas are
ridiculously calm for an ocean, but that is because the wind remains very
weak.

John emptied the diesel cans into the tank, to get an accurate calibration
of our usage he should probably have done it on Monday evening. The gauge
said the tank was very nearly full, we are just not sure of exactly how much
we had used and hence our fuel economy. We believe we are using a bit less
than 4 litres an hour, maintaining 1700 rpm which gives us a speed of about
5 knots. If the wind picks up a bit it will help push the speed a bit
higher. We currently have 388 nM to go, approximately 78 hours, hence we
need about 312 litres. That should be enough but it will be tight!

On the food front, it was warm enough to opt for cereal instead of porridge
for breakfast. I hadn’t made any bread so I cooked a part baked baguette,
one of a precious few we have left from the Caribbean, to accompany a
frittata for lunch. Dinner was herby sausages with sweet potato oven baked
wedges, carrots and beans followed by fresh pineapple and yogurt.

A slight digression: you associate pineapples with tropical growing
conditions however this one was grown on the island of Sao Miguel in the
Azores which has a temperate climate. They grow the pineapples in
glasshouses with no extra heat, it’s quite labour intensive and they only
get one crop from each plant, unlike Hawaii where they are grown outdoors
and they harvest three crops per plant. They also grow bananas on Sao
Miguel. They surround the banana plants with a tall, thick hedge to protect
them from the cool winds, so the bananas can grow in a warmer micro-climate
than would otherwise be the case.

Landfall in Camaret should be sometime early Saturday afternoon, we shall
see!

Joyce