Position: 14°12.250N/39°53.924W, Wednesday Nov. 30th , 03:45 UTC
Today we crossed the 37½° longitude, meaning I had to set the shipsclock back an hour again :-)
We are not only getting further West everyday, we're getting further South too, and that we really notice. Just North of the 14th parallel, we're in tropical waters now. During the day the temperature gets around 31°C and at night it doesn't really cool off much. It stays about 25°C, which is very nice ;-). The water too is about 25°C so everyday we have a nice and warmish shower on the foredeck, still salt though :-o
When we left the Canaries, I had to put on a sweater and my shoes at night, now a T shirt is more than enough. This night, during my watch, some dark clouds came over and it started raining, not very hard, but enough to get wet... However as, soon as the rain stopped and even before the clouds were gone, the warm wind dried my shirt in no time.
The wind is very steady between 15 and 29 kts and coming just North of East. So, on our course over ground of 260°, it's a dead down wind sail. During the day we have the two genoas goose winged and the mainsail. The two genoas sail like a spinnaker but are more robust and more easy to trim. At night we drop one genoa and pole out the remaining one. That gives us a window of about 30°-35° to sail in. That's works really great. However sometimes the wind picks up a bit more and usually shifts then. Than the waves come from a different angle and that can give a very sportly course to steer. Like last night.... after a while I decided to trip the genoa from the pole and go to a more comfortable beam reach. By that time Marc and Jur also were awake, so we also gibed … it was a really rocky course... :-o. By now, these kind of manoeuvrings are a piece of cake, even at night. The beam reach wasn't that easy to steer too though, until we furled in the genoa a bit.
Today Rutger made an inventory of our remaining food and drink supplies. With about 8 or 9 more days to go we're fine on everything, on bread we're more the fine, with still 18 left :-o
We could have gotten some more bottled water though, with the water in the tanks we are fine. That is, as long as it stays there... I just went to take a nap before my evening watch when Marc was doing the dishes and then he called me.... there wasn't coming water out of the tap.. ? The water pump was on.... it could be that the starboard tank had gone empty, but all of a sudden no water at all is very weird.
When I checked, it turned out that the hose of the nanometer was loose.... We had turned on the pump for washing the vegetables for dinner. Normally the pump stops when the pressure is on again but when the hose with the nanometer is gone, the pressure never gets there and the pump doesn't stop.... pumping all that was left in the tank into the bilge …. :-(
So we lost about 60 liters... The good news though, is that I have two separate water tanks and that the remaining port tank of about 150 liters is still full. Also I had just cleaned all the filters today, including the one of the bilge pump so pumping the bilge was done in no time :-o
Anyway, we're still fine on everything and if it comes to it, we also have the watermaker :-)
