plus ca change
After a lovely (and suitably very expensive) birthday chat with Chris, who is sweltering in Alice Springs, we settled down to another languid and windless night. We have the yankee poled to windward and the staysail to leeward, giving us an average speed is about 3 knots. There is the usual rolling and lurching but at least with the mainsail down we are spared those bone-jarring thwacks.
This morning (7 Feb), as usual the breeze picked up and backed. Overjoyed, we doused the staysail, hauled up the main and unrolled the yankee to leeward. 6 wonderful knots earned me a cold morning ale. Our spirits were high for an hour until the breeze died, as it did yesterday. Now we’re slopping about again.
I must say, I have been over-optimistic about our times for this trip – Donald Street and a couple of friends who have done the crossing from Cabo Verde have all had me thinking that 14 days was a reasonable target. What an idiot I am.