Day 2 (2023-01-05)
The day starts slowly, we are still recovering from the sleepless night we both had and because there’s no 240v there’s no coffee…
We downloaded another forecast via the IridiumGO and checked the position of our friends from TiAma that left the Canaries a few days before us on their way to Suriname. They have a heavy high latitude steel boat and need a good amount of wind to move, they are going slow but safe and have been at sea now for 20 days, they should be arriving any day now. This PredictWind/IridiumGO is genius if only it wasn’t so bloody expensive!
From tomorrow we have two other boat friends to follow as they start their journey to Mindelo in Cape Verde from the Canaries.
We spent the entire first half of the day trying to catch up on our sleep but not very effectively, too many things going through our minds.
With the sea state calmer we inspect the cable, and the BMS (Battery Management System) was quite baffled. We have a few options, but none that we want to do at sea. One is to replace the cable, but that requires switching an existing cable with a smaller one and re-running both cables, the other option is to rewire the control box to get the negative from another wire of the batteries and run the Multiplus rogue.
The day went by very much in this strange standstill moment in time, with not much to do, and not wanting to do much. We lost the speed over ground log, this must-have weed caught in it and at sea, we have no easy way to clear it, the big thing with this is the error of wind speeds that occur, due to true wind speed downwind being determined by wind speed plus speed over water to determine true wind speed. This gives us a false reality of the wind conditions and when to reef etc.
Mid-afternoon we were both required to go on the foredeck, the extra downwind Jib sheet had come loose from the pole and needed to be clipped back in. A bit of debate between the ideas of furling the Jib bringing the pole in, and then setting it all back or lifting the pole at the mast while lowering its end until it got close to the lifelines allowing one of us to clip the sheet back in. The latter option was decided, given the sea state had calmed quite a bit. A reasonably easy task.
Ella didn’t like it this time and cried pretty much all time while left tethered in the cockpit.
We found 3 dead flying fish that we gave her as apologies for our unacceptable behaviour.
She stayed most of the afternoon perched on the stern looking at the non-stop puffs of Sargassum seaweed passing by. It sure has kept her entertained for hours.
This seaweed has also fouled our Speed Log affecting our ability to calculate true winds and apparent winds, a slight bummer when you are already a bit tired, sleep deprived, and rational thought is not always present.
During our second night on passage, both winds and sea calmed down considerably allowing us to have a more proper rest. Being double-handed means passages can be a bit more challenging in terms of sleep management, and because of that, we are taking a conservative approach to our sail plan.
We’ve only seen two boats since leaving the "coastal waters" of Cape Verde, both were part of a big Japanese fishing fleet made famous by the Sea Shepherds series. It’s sad to see them emptying our oceans.
More and more and bigger patches of Sargassum seaweed surround us, Ella is beyond excited.
24h daily run 119 nautical miles.
A bit short from our plan, but maybe we can catch up tomorrow.
***In the spirit of sharing our dreams and experiences we have shared this blog post in the NOFOREIGNLAND.COM website sailors community.