St Helena Outbound Day 15

Hi everyone,
We are currently in position 07 05S 031 01W, saillng at 5.5 knots on a course of 300M.  The wind is SE at 15-18 knots with a slight sea and minimal swell.  We are sailing under double-reefed main and full yankee.  Scattered small cumulus.  Our day's run was 114nm, our DMG was 102nm and we have 2331nm to go.

We have logged 2002nm for the passage to date.  Amazingly this means our average boat speed (through the water) is still 5.5knots despite being under headsail only for the last week.  And this is now the longest time we're ever spent at sea - 15 days.  I think that record's going to tumble in a big way on this passage!  Also it's nice to finally have our DMG only a little less than the day's run - shows we're able to head in the right direction at last!

We've had a very pleasant sail over the last 24 hours.  The wind was 10-12 knots last night which was enough to keep us moving along.  The sky was clear all night apart from a few small cumulus which passed over.  A spectacular moonless night.  A couple of ships came by but neither was close.

Our course is taking us approximately west (true vice magnetic) towards the coast of S America.  Hopefully we will find the predicted northerly current off the coast and gybe north to ride it to the cape (and beyond).

Yesterday afternoon we transferred 15 litres of water from a jerry can into the bladder which supplies the faucet in the head.  We also transferred 20 litres from a jerry into the main tanks which left them as full as we can get them at sea.  So far we have used no more than 80 litres of water in two weeks.  That's less then 3 litres per person per day.  We're pleased with that since it means the remaining 200 litres will last for over 5 weeks!  We're sure we won't need that long.

Here's where the fresh water goes, with a total usage of 6 litres each day:

• 1 litre for hand/face washing and brushing teeth in the head
• 0.6 litre for washing (in a pump bottle) we wash every other day, using fresh water for rinsing only
• 0.4 ltre for rinsing dishes (in a spray bottle)
• 4 litres drinking, cooking and shaving

We're making sure we stay well hydrated and 2 litres each per day seems to be all we need.  We also drink fruit juice, milk with our breakfast cereal and the juice from our daily fruit dessert.  Together these probably add 0.5 litre/day.

If the ITCZ delivers heavy rain we now have three empty jerry cans able to be filled.  Not that we need more water, but a daily wash might be nice!