Although we had wind speeds of 15-20 Kts overnight and around 15 Kts for most of the morning, we still had a horrible countercurrent of 1.5 Kts against us, which meant we had to continue to motor-sail on one engine at a low RPM to keep our speed up. However, by 1500, the countercurrent had subsided, the winds had picked up again to 15-20 Kts and we were sailing again at last!
Besides Elaine not sleeping too well on both her off shifts last night and Roy almost suffocating himself, after putting his pillow over his head to drown out the noise on his second off shift, we both managed to catch up on our sleep during daylight hours.
Additionally, Roy mopped up water in our starboard bilge, having no idea where it came from and we both finished reading our books.
We’ve certainly had a few unusual occurrences on this passage, though. In particular, we’ve never heard a MRCC (Maritime Rescue and Coordination Centre) calling yachts to lookout for migrant boats. Today we could hear Arreciffe Radio on Lanzarote Island and Las Palmas MRCC on Gran Canaria Island calling various yachts, which was a little disconcerting, as we really didn’t want to encounter anything like this, especially at night and run the risk of colliding with one of these boats.
Additionally, we’ve heard numerous warships too; American, British, Spanish and Moroccan. In particular, one occurrence was a securité broadcast on the VHF radio from an American warship requesting traffic to remain 15NM away from a stated location, since live ammunition was being used in an exercise; really! Furthermore, the British warship was informing a vessel to cease operations and leave British waters immediately. For all we know, World War III could have erupted and we’d be none the wiser!
During Roy’s first watch of the night tonight, he had to wake Elaine to jibe, which set our final course for Graciosa Island, located just north of Lanzarote Island. He also had to restart one of the engines because the countercurrent had raised its ugly head again and the winds had dropped to below 15 Kts.
By the time Elaine came on watch, with the moon rising much later, it was a very dark night initially, but, by 2300, a waning gibbous was lighting our way as we soldiered on with less than 80NM to go.
