Day 408 – THE ATLANTIC: Day Thirteen


Distance sailed today: 105 NM
Total distance sailed: 1131 NM
Midnight GPS position: N 21.59 W036.06
Wind: NNE Wind Force 4
Sea state: Slight
Generator hours: 3.1hr
So with such a limted amount of fresh water on the boat, how do you wash the dishes? Washing them in fresh water all the time wil deplete the fresh water too much.

That’s where First Mate Ellie’s ingenious comes in.

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A normal spray bottle is filled with a quater dishwashing liqud and the rest fresh water. Then all you do is spray this mix onto your dishes one by one as you wash them. You then rinse them in salt water hauled up on board by bucket. Great idea. Might save on washing up liquid back home too perhaps…

Well after a week at sea without seeing any other sea vessels, we saw three today. One on my watch, two on Ellie’s. The ship I saw was at night, about 3am. It had two white anchor lights, one higher than the other. This means that the vessel was longer than 50 feet in length. Bright lights fom the bridge could be seen, indicating that it was probably a large ship. Usually the rule is that you pass another oncoming vessel on the port side, however this ship did a big arc around us on the starboard side. A little strange…

In general, I am much less awe inspired by being out here in the middle of the ocean than I had anticipated. Here, I am not surrounded by 2,000 kilometers of ocean on each side of me. I am surrounded by only 15km at best. A big circle where we are the center. We are in endless forward motion, but are rewarded with no visual result.

However, I do often think of how I will feel once on the other side. All forward motion rewarded in that instant of seeing land. Of touching land on the other side of the Atlantic. I look forward to it.

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WEATHER FAXES FOR TODAY

I have marked our position on these weather maps with a big X. You can see that there is a possible tropcial cyclone and a tropical wave directly south of our position. With this information, Skipper Steve decided to head a little more to the north than we had planned, to avoid any confrontations.

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