Canaries Outbound Day 7

Hi everyone,
At noon today we are at 19 55N 026 44W sailing at 5.5 knots on a beam reach under full main and full yankee. The wind is SE 8G12. The seas are slight with a long 1m swell. The air temperature is 23C, water 25C and above are scattered small Cu clouds. Our noon to noon daily run was a slightly improved 104nm. We have 2068nm to go. Very slow going yesterday afternoon with steady improvement since. Drier and warmer too.

Yesterday afternoon the rain showers persisted. We kept a reef in the main just in case but that also kept our speed down. By 1800 (now on UTC-2) the wind had died completely. We'd been under cloud all day and too slow for the SailingGen to produce much current, so the engine went on. After a couple of hours the batteries were in better shape and a little wind had returned. So hte engine was turned off.

The evening SSB sked ran two hours later than previously and worked well. The group were communicating over 1500nm, westward from the Gambia River. We had Cerulean, Lady of Lorien, Ruffian and Tuuletar on channel. Lady of Lorien is about 350nm ahead so hasn't put much more distance between us. Via PredictWind's GPS Tracking we know ReVision II is still about 220nm behind.

During the evening as we ghosted along in very light airs we started hearing bird song. Can't remember having done so at sea before. We think they were petrels.

From the early hours of the morning the rain clouds disappeared and we hoisted full sail. The wind gradually increased to 8-10 knots from the SE which put the wind just forward of the beam. We ended up having a very nice sail during our first night running 4 hour watches.

This morning the wind has hung-in and the sky has cleared to a few small Cu clouds. And the temperature is now very pleasant indeed. In the cabin it's 27C so our fleeces are no longer required. The sun's heat seems to have stepped up a notch. I spent much of my morning watch airing the cockpit lockers and hanging damp towels and cloths in the sun to dry.

Today marking one week at sea led us to check our water supplies. So far we've used only 30 litres from the main tanks and 20 litres from the forward bladder. That's 20% of our capacity so all's well there. And we've motored for 6 hours overall, burning only around 5% of our capacity.

We expect the wind to die again tonight for 12-18 hours. When it returns it should be the NE Trades filling back in. They should then propel us westward towards the Caribbean.

Trust all's well where you are!