At noon today we are at 13 45N 050 34W sailing at 5 knots on a broad reach under single-reefed main and single-furled yankee. The wind is NE 11G14. The seas are 1m with a 2m N swell. The air temperature is 25C, water 28C and above is a clear blue sky. Our noon to noon daily run was 97nm, but see the last paragraph below. We have 677nm to go - 127nm closer to Antigua today. One Sydney-Hobart race to go!
Weed - what a drag
Yesterday afternoon I realised our poor boat speed may be due to weed on the keel, skeg and prop. We used a waterproof cameras on a selfie stick to capture images. Both the shaft anode and the propellor were encased in weed. A brief run of the engine, including a short sharp burst astern got rid of the weed. Our boat speed improved a little - for a while at least. The AutoProp is a feathering propellor so bound to catch weed - one of its few disadvantages.
The other thing visible in the images was fouling of the hull. We seem to be paying the price of not re-keying our Coppercoat antifoul. We've cleaned the bottom regularly (last in Madeira) but not rekeyed it to expose more copper. Big mistake. I suspect this is where most of our drag is coming from. And I reckon the growth originates from bugs in the weed since keel and skeg are free of the fouling. Rekeying will be a priority task post-arrival.
We had a very pleasant, albeit slow, sail yesterday afternoon. Winds stayed light at ENE 9G13. Overnight the wind increased to 12G17 and backed to the NNE. That put us on a beam reach, and we're likely to be so for most of the rest of the passage. Our big zig south kept us out of a big windless area but meant we'd be reaching in.
A tiny sliver of moon rose shortly before dawn. By dawn we had more wind and it had backed to the NNE, putting us on a beam reach. This lasted for several hours and was faster but uncomfortable. By mid-morning the wind had veered back to the NE and we are now broad reaching again.
We've now been at sea for three weeks. So we did our usual supplies check. The main water tanks were down to about 20 litres and the forward bladder was almost empty. We transferred two 20 litre jerries of water into the main tanks from on deck. And we transferred 20 litres from a jerry in the forepeak into the forward bladder using a drill pump. The drill pump is proving useful for this job since it avoid our having to elevate the jerry when using a jiggler hose.
We now have 90 litres of water remaining of our original 250 litres. So we've been using about 55 litres per week, a little more than previously estimated. The additional amount follows from using our pressure water can to rinse off after salt water showers. That's taking 2.5 litres/person, vice the 1 litre allocated previously. All this water information may sound arcane, but running out of water would be a very BAD thing!
This morning we also inspected the log - the thru-hull sensor which measures boat speed, water depth and water termperature. We found two small 'worm' criters in the impeller which I think are smaller versions of the criters attached to the hull. They weren't stopping the impeller turning but were slowing it down. So our recent noon-to-noon runs have been under-estimates, and the current's real, but not as strong as thought. With a clean impeller it seems we have 0.75 knot of current.
Happy New Year!
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