Here is our first live news from the Atlantic. Yesterday, as expected, we left the marina to refuel diesel and win the bridge that allows boats to pass St. Marteen Lagoon to the sea. We had adjustments to make on the large sail to avoid glitches on the road, so we stayed a bit in the Bay before leaving. Carl we wrote a good salad of feta despite the swell and we put the cap on the Azores around 14:00. Initially, he would deal with the turbulence around the mountains of St Martin, but after the wind had settled almost according to the weather forecast. The Zero code brought us to 7.5 – 8.0 knots until the sunset. During the evening and night, we dodged several grains, some have given us an increase in 15 knots of wind, others have picked up our wind a few minutes. Nothing really worrying and in fact, this action allows us to keep us busy…
We have established a system of the watch for a period of 4 h. Serge has from 5:00 – 9:00, Carl from 1:00 – 5:00 and me 9:00 – 01:00. The crew that is on the next quarter is on call, meaning that it can be requested on the bridge to do maneuvers. For the moment, has not had mutiny, so I guess it works well…
Wind, for the moment, make us life difficult: we are obligated to make the close, a look I hate because life on board is difficult. The boat is heeled, and each task, and to stand on the toilet bowl, Cook becomes a perilous adventure. Nevertheless, Serge was able to prepare a chicken to mangoes and rice (but he forgot the mango!) last night and the other two are fulfilled from the dishes. Tonight, we will be less stunt and change of pace for our forces.
Since this morning around 4 am, we are operating in a sector or the current slows us significantly. We take between 1.0 and 1.5 knots of current in the teeth! Any advance that we had from the start on our performance estimated (at 80% of our polar) was removed in a few hours. This morning, we were also hindered by a Sargasso boot that was caked on the bottom of the engine. We have a good half hour to free ourselves from our ballast by ensuring that the propeller operates properly.
Today, the wind should gradually weaken throughout the day. It goes same for waves that are currently about 4 feet.
Good day and we envy you having a horizontal floor!
