Diamond Blue is lying 11th in a field of 22. Richard sends an update.
“Our problem with the USB socket turned out to be more serious than initial impressions- due to the the high power consumption of Starlink which had literally melted some wires behind the switchboard.
Fortunately David got his university degree in Electrical Engineering so knows one side of a circuit tester from another which is more than can be said of the rest of the crew.
We have had a line out to try and catch a fish but no luck while,most irritatingly, we hear on the radio other boats bragging about Bonito and Mahi Mahi for lunch.
Huge excitement when we caught a fish yesterday afternoon – not sure what it is but big enough for at least a couple of meals, starting with V’s birthday supper.
Quite windy now, happily from ENE and we are heading west, but the swell has also increased which causes much rolling which is slightly wearing.
Our 4th crew member is a Hydrovane wind driven self steering, nicknamed Henry, normally immaculately behaved however todays issue is a wobbly fixing which we need to try and sort out otherwise it’s hand steering for the rest of the way which would be really wearing!
Nevertheless we must appreciate the best bit – shorts and t shirts with just one more layer while on watch at night.
We are now firmly in the ‘trade winds’ which means a fresh breeze from almost directly behind us, temp mid 20s, largely sunny and the only thing to watch out for are ‘squalls’ when the wind can suddenly double for a short while.
There are various alternative sail combinations for sailing down wind.
Spinnakers best avoided as they are temperamental and require too much concentration. Our preference was twin jibs. However, as we were trying to set our secondary jib (for the technical; loose luffed with sheet led through a soft shackled block at the outer end of the boom) we experienced a squall and very irritatingly we ended up tearing the second jib – beyond our limited sail mending abilities.
Entirely my fault but it means we must take great care of our other Jib/Genoa.
Time zones are not normally a factor when sailing, however, St Lucia is 4 hours behind The Canaries. We were rather enjoying a little extra daylight each evening but have now decided to turn back ‘Diamond Blue time’ by an hour every few days.
Yesterday afternoon we reached halfway in mileage so we are roughly equal distance from the African and South American mainland and with a mere 1,450 nautical miles to go we celebrated with a mince pie.
Morale further boosted by hopefully having fixed ‘Henry’ the self steering Hydrovane’s wobbly (and leaky) fixings so we are currently no longer needing to bale buckets of water out of the stern locker every watch. These are the sort of little achievements which mean a lot in our very condensed world.
Sometimes it feels a bit like snakes and ladders as we wonder what next ?
Woke up to find flying fish on the deck – too small and bony to eat but maybe they were fleeing the larger fish we continue to try and catch on the purple plastic squid we are trolling behind Diamond Blue.
Many of the squalls are accompanied by a short sharp shower – tempting to get out the shampoo however so far glad we didn’t as the rain hasn’t lasted long enough & we would have ended up rinsing in salt water.”
