First of all, thank you to everyone for all your emails, I’m afraid I haven’t had time to answer them all as I have very little power available so can’t charge the laptop very often at the moment. When I get a chance I will get around to replying to you all.
Meanwhile the wind continued to blow elsewhere yesterday, so I drifted with the current all afternoon. It was very pleasant now that I’ve resigned myself to going nowhere fast, and the silence was only broken when I started the engine at 9pm to charge the batteries for an hour. Power is now a real problem, and I wish I had got the solar panels I was considering buying. However budget and time ruled against them, so there’s nothing I can do.
By nightfall there was a tiny SSW breeze of 5 knots which is enough to drift along at about 2 knots, but not enough for the Monitor. Since there wasn’t enough power to drive the autopilot I decided to drop all sails for the night and switch everything off except the radar, which I left on watch while I retired for the night.
It was a very calm peaceful night apart from a brief moment of excitement around 3am when I woke to the sound of the wind generator spinning. That meant there was enough wind to sail, so I rushed up on deck and hoisted all the canvas I could lay my hands on, but of course the breeze died away again within an hour.
This morning I spent ages rigging the drifter (a big lightweight sail) so it’s now poled out to windward, with the genoa out to leeward, and the main furled away. This allows me to run dead downwind on a useful course of NNE at a speed of anywhere between 0 and 3 knots, depending on the fitful little breeze.
Downwind sailing with twin headsails
It’s been a frustrating 24 hours during which we only managed to sail around 20 miles, but the favourable current boosted this to around 60 so I can’t really complain. It’s lovely and sunny and I can do lots of little jobs around the boat, like for example fitting a water filtration system which I had bought but didn’t have time to fit. My tap water now runs clear and fresh rather than slightly murky and dubious-looking!
My celestial navigation is also going well. By the time I was ready to take yesterday afternoon’s sight it was too hazy to see the horizon, but this morning’s sight put my line of position within 2 miles of the GPS position which is fantastic! Luckily it’s so calm that even a beginner like me can get a good sight it seems.
Today I’ll carry on with more of the same, and just hope the wind picks up. At least it’s now got some west in it which is good and we are heading in roughly the right direction, namely north-ish. Once we get to around 40 degrees we’ll take a right and head to Europe, but that’s a little way off yet.
Well, that’s about all for now, but before I go I’d just like to say a big hello to all my father’s colleagues at Micromeritics of Atlanta. Thank you all for your support and emails, it’s nice to know you’ve got something to distract you from your work 😉