We’ll ‘good day’ land lovers.
Hope you are sitting comfortably in your homes as we are being rolled about at sea.
We were at 19’54.647’N, 32’05.555’W at 9am this morning. The GPS puts us 1684 nm until we see land.
It was a drizzly day yesterday. The winds died down and we were just rolling about on the waves doing 2-4 knots all day.
The human’s decided to get some inside jobs done.
First they bailed out the bilge. They think a deck fitting, probably a deck drain, is loose and leaking slowly.
As they have been sloshing a lot of buckets of water onto the deck to clean up after me and all the fish blood. Some of it is sneaking inside through the walls somewhere. The boat is so tightly packed and the waves so rolly….I will keep you informed if they get a chance to dig it all out and find the leak.
In the mean time the bilge pump, that has been repaired 20x, had to be replaced finally. The human’s had been smart enough to pick up a replacement that would fit in Las Palmas, just in case this happened.
Note: to other boaters.
If you can, bring a spare EVERYTHING. If you don’t need it someone else will.
Once that was done they proceeded to use their 12V vacuum packer to seal up all the fish meat for the freezer. We had some of the blue fin tuna at lunch ….and it was the best Tuna in the world. Friends are already asking us to save some for them. Not a problem as it was a 13 pound fish, and we got ‘just a few’ pounds of steaks off of it. Every tried to clean a 15 pound solid muscled fish. It is like dealing with a giant log!
The weather cleared by late afternoon and we got in a bit more fishing. But we lost all three fish we got on, and one was another big one. You just get those days sometimes.
The winds picked up in the evening and, as you can see from our position, we were able to make up the ground we lost in the light airs. It did make it a very rolly night. The person on night watch with me had to make sure they did not doze off or a sudden big wave would throw the two us to the cockpit floor. And I do not appreciate being used as a landing cushion.
Today looks like a beautiful sunny day. The weather is meant to be stable over the next few days, so we should make good progress and have a chance to enjoy ourselves. We are keeping a keener eye on the weather now that we have heard that three smaller boats, including Limbo, have left the Cape Verdes and are now making the crossing with us. Lochmarin has left a day later to help ‘sheppard’ them along with weather updates and daily SSB contact. We wish them a lovely passage. You can follow them if you wish through the links on our blog page.
For me now…fried breakfast!
SOA Day 8 Click on image for larger picture.
