The middle of the Atlantic
Day 19: In open sea
Position: 18° 43.02N 21° 10.77W
Course: 209 degrees
Distance travelled: 1410.77 nm from Gibraltar
Average speed: 5.9 knots
Conditions: 3-4′ N swells, apparent wind 4.6 knots N
Before leaving Las Palmas, Grand Canaria, Scott and Mary Flanders picked up another crew member – Steve. Steve crossed the Atlantic with them on the Nordhavn Atlantic Rally in 2004. For the first installment of their diary, click here.
Yesterday afternoon we transferred the 89.5 gallons of fuel in the cockpit bladder into the port tank. Later the wind picked up, clocking more to the port side (ENE). The stabilizers were taking a beating from the low rpm so at 20:30 we added 100 rpm (from 13:50 to 14:50) and that settled things down. At 00:30 this morning Mary reduced rpm’s to 1400 with declining seas and at 05:00 Steve went back to 1350 rpm. We have had a many hours of head current plus the inefficiency of somewhat rough water giving us the decline in distance travelled for the past 24 hours.
Speed is up a bit now at 6.4 knots with little wind or waves (both are favourable so if this current will reverse or go away we’ll be rockin’). We’ll see. In the big picture it doesn’t really matter. We’ll get there when we get there.
Early this morning was flying-fish night on my watch (05:00-09:00). I collected about 10 good-sized flyers and one monster. They are resting in a zip-lock bag in the fridge for today’s lunch. Capt Scott is going to dip them in milk and egg then tumble them in a zip lock with a batter of 50-50 Ritz type crackers and flour. A quick fry in hot olive oil should do the trick. This is a first for the Egret crew. In this great weather we put out two worms to drag and will hopefully catch a yellowfin tuna, wahoo or mahi mahi.
