We achieved several milestones on November 25th.
Milestone One - we both had showers!
We set up two of my “I’ve been thinking” ideas, which always bring out great sighs from David, and a worried expression, followed, always, by brilliant implementation. We have two solar shower bags, filled with non potable Mindelo water, flopping about in the sun on the aft cabin coachroof. We attached one bag to two mizen mast stays, setting it up so that its hose went through the hatch to the aft heads. In there, over the toilet, we put up a temporary slatted seat made out of plastic decking boards, to create a shower seat under the hose. The resultant shower worked brilliantly and was warmer than those in Mindelo Marina!
Milestone Two - we saw some wildlife.
A big pod of dolphins joined us for a while. The water is so beautifully clear that we could watch them easily, especially as they swam up to the boat. They did some jumping too. Always joyous. Always impossible to photograph.
Yesterday a big dark brown/black bird, that was a funny shape, had tried to land on the mizen mast top. I thought it looked like a bird of prey carrying another bird in its feet. David agreed it looked hawk like. It flew off after several failed landing attempts. Today, on David’s deck inspection, he found the mangled head of a bird lying on deck - so our suppositions must have been correct.
Milestone Three - battery management sorted.
It’s hot in the day and still warm over night. The two fridges are working hard. We are running all of the instruments and the auto pilot continues tirelessly. We have Starlink on for two or three sessions a day. We are not rationing our power usage. We have only sailed so far. The sails do shade the coachroof solar panels from early afternoon, but not so much those on the bimini. The shaft alternator is also, very much, doing its best. However, when we can only sail slowly due to lighter winds the shaft alternator does not produce as much power and a couple of days ago our battery capacity dropped to 84%. We weren’t happy with that with so far to go. So, yesterday, we had two sessions of charging off the main engine alternator and got the batteries up to 90%. Today we have been sailing fast and the shaft alternator and solar increased that over the day to 91%. We topped it up to 96% with the main engine in the evening and have sailed so fast over night the capacity only dropped to 94%. So all back as we like it.
Milestone Four - more east in the wind
We have not been making our correct course because there has been too much north in the wind, and because we are loathe to change our sail plan as that’s when things go wrong. It’s not that easy either, with just two of us, in rolly conditions. We are now a long way south of the majority of the fleet and ours is a longer route. But - today - the wind was in the 050’s in the morning and the 060’s in the afternoon, so we are gradually curving to get closer to our proper line.
Today was a good wind, around 14/15 knots, and we have had some great, fast, sailing. By nightfall we thought we were doing well and making progress towards getting on track. But overnight it has swung back into the NE and also increased to over 20 knots. For a while we have had two reefs in and been back off course. So we haven’t really achieved this milestone. We have to do so tomorrow as we are just into 13 degrees latitude and Grenada is on 12. But, it should be okay as Tuesday is forecast to be the day for the easterlies to properly arrive. And the sailing has been so good that we covered 145.5 nautical miles today, averaging 6.1 knots, which is god for us. And we are 138 nautical miles closer to Point Saline, on Grenada, and still loving every minute.