Early this morning, under a starry night sky after the moon had set, Paw Paw continued southwestward, hoping to encounter the trade winds later today.
Messages from loved ones have also helped pass the days as has the routine of the watch schedule, allowing flexibility during the daylight hours for each of us to catch up on sleep. Being able to sail the last 48 hours has certainly contributed to a more relaxed and peaceful passage.
By the time the watch change came around later this morning, we had started to feel the effects of the trade winds, with wind speeds reaching 15 Kts at times, increasing our average hourly SOG (Speed Over Ground) to above 6 kts and by the time Elaine surfaced before noon that had increased to 6.7 Kts. Hoorah! Long may it last!
Today was also watermaker day and Roy had decided to bake bread as well, but by 1230 he was in desperate need of a nap, leaving Elaine on watch with strict instructions to wake him in an hour so he could put his bread in the oven. Paul, on the other hand, was supposedly keeping a watchful eye on his fishing line, while Justine assumed her usual position in the sun of the cockpit, but it hadn’t taken long for both of them to nod off.
By 1430, Roy’s bread was out of the oven, the watermaker had been switched off and he had returned to his cabin for a nap. Soon thereafter the two sleeping beauties in the cockpit surfaced.
By 1800, a spaghetti bolognaise dinner, without the mince, had been cooked, complements of Elaine and consumed, following which everyone settled down in their favourite spot to enjoy the last of the evening before the night watches began all over again. With the sunsetting later, Elaine didn’t see it, since she headed to bed early.
From a sailing perspective we were still trundling along in a southwesterly direction, maximising our VMG (Velocity Made Good) as much as possible and enjoying a SOG of anything from 5.7-6 Kts depending on the fluctuation of the wind speed. Throughout the afternoon, though, we’d enjoyed speeds of 7 Kts, for which we were grateful.
During the initial watch of the night, the boys had a stand-on yacht to deal with that was crossing our bow. Normally this situation isn’t an issue, but, when sailing wing-on-wing, it can be a little trickier to give-away. The oddity of this particular situation, though, was that we had the exact same scenario with the exact same yacht at roughly the same time yesterday evening, making us wonder where on earth this yacht had sailed to throughout the day to be coming across our bow from our starboard side in the exact same way. Regardless, the main concern was that this was also the second time this yacht had no navigation lights switched on and had switched off the AIS (Automatic Identification System), only switching it back on at the last minute. Thankfully there was still enough light to spot the yacht on the horizon, but it showed up on the radar too. What we aren’t sure of is whether or not this is an ARC 2023 yacht, but if it happens again, we will certainly investigate further and report the yacht, as those practises are against the rally regulations, not to mention, downright dangerous!
When the ladies came on watch at 2200, Justine enthusiastically accepted the offer from Elaine to do the watch, while Elaine sat close by to offer any assistance needed. With almost a week under her belt at watching Elaine, Justine did a stunning job. She’s also taken over the duty of doing the SSB radio net at noon each day. We’ll make a sailor out of her yet!
