Cape Verdes Outbound Day 7

Hi everyone,
At noon today we were at 13 58N 037 54W steering 280M, sailing under 1 reef and 1 furl at 5 knots.  The wind was 13G17 from the NE.  Our noon to noon run by the log was again 113nm.

Yesterday afternoon was lovely with a bright sunny sky with scattered small cumulus.  We made good but not great progress W.  Last night was spectacular, initially with no moon.  At last we spotted the Southern Cross.  Previously it's been obscured by the Saharan dust.  So naturally we sang:

Under the Southern Cross I stand

A sprig of wattle in my hand

A native of my native land

Australia, you <expletive> beauty!

That's by Western Australian legendary wicket keeper Rod Marsh.  See here.

Just after dawn we spotted a dolphin following close behind us.  He/she hung around for quite a while.  Later we had a tropic bird trying unsuccessfully to land-on.  Such pretty birds.

We struggled with lightish winds this morning.  And then the weed came.  Huge clumps of it, some approaching the size of a tennis court.  Inevitably a lot was caught by the WindPilot water vane.  The water vane weak link sheared and the vane lifted up.  After that we tightened the bolt (as previously suggested by WindPilot).  But the weed accumulated again within minutes and rendered the water vane useless.  ie Aircraft crash when their the wings cover in ice for example - same concept.

We had to switch from WindPilot 'Kazi' to autopilot 'Kami'.  Kami's working well on his lowest gain setting but still moves the rudder far more than Kazi.  Hei's more noisy and consumes electtricity.  An advantage of the autopilot is it doesn't care as much about sail balance, so we shook out a reef.  Faster!

Later in the morning we ran the engine for an hour.  Initially it was to give it a burst astern to 'blow off' weed on the prop.  Then we let it run to charge the batteries which have been slowly discharging.  That's partly due to the Saharan dust and also since half of them are vertical at sea and don't catch much sunlight.

Our friends on OCC sv Metzi departed Mindelo one day before us, putting themselves 150nm ahead.  After 5 days they were about 350nm ahead.  Now, in lighter winds, they are about 300nm ahead.  It's not a race.  They're a Moody 44 with an IRC TCF of 0.99.  Ours is 0.91. So they should be 8% faster than us.  But it's NOT a race!

Trust all's well where you are.  Happy Christmas Eve!