We have reclaimed our 300 mile lead after 24 hours with solid breeze and either the Code 3 or little Code 5 reaching gennaker up. Last night was spectacular with sustained periods at 18kts and a whole sched where our slowest speed was 11kts. It was extremely wet on deck with a constant deluge of spray and when the sun came up this morning we found that the boat was festooned with sprigs of Sargasso weed all along the lifelines and up into the rigging.
 
We are close to changing back to our big spinnaker and will keep it up almost all the way to Charleston. After hourding our Pringles supply for all the leg, and celebrating our passing the 1000 mile mark with a packet of salt and vinegar crisps, we now have enough to have a whole snack sized packet EACH DAY! Nice to know that speed has its rewards although its the fresh food on the horizon thats keeping us going.
 
See you soon.
 
- C

News of the day, there’s still enough weed about to make us sail as if walking through a mine field. Relatively frequently we need to sock the spinnaker and round up into the wind to sail big clumps of it off the keel and the rudders. We’ve polished this maneuver so we can get back up to full speed again in less than 2 minutes, so its an easy decision to make as the boat quickly becomes unwieldy from the turbulence on the rudders.

We have also been sailing in very different wind from the others, seemingly they have been reaching along happily whilst we have been doing light VMG running on a much more northerly course. The GRIB weather forecasts show dramatically different routes each update, and the different models rarely agree on a route to take. Given this, we have gybed over on to port which was exciting as we hadn’t done a maneuver in over a week! We now have a whole other side of the boat to get used to, another bunk to turn into a sweaty mess and another door to use when going out to helm. Its just like going on holiday, you still have the same stuff to do, like cooking dinner and making beds, but its in new surroundings so it feels excitng and fun!

The downside of gybing was moving the sail stack thanks to the inevitable collection of flying fish unearthed from the folds of the sail bags. When exposed to sun, flying fish can go down one of two routs. Petrificaton, where they become little fishy fossils as hard as rock or putrification where they dissolve into fish slime. Sadly, there were more that had chosen the later course and despite many buckets of water the sails and deck still stink like a fish market on a hot day.

We finally have a fully functioning boat again! Even as we have been averaging 11-12 knots and blasting over the ocean with our small reaching gennaker our mind has been on other things. First, after having been totally reliant on the engine to charge while we worked on a problem with our Hydrogenerator, we then came to depend solely on that when we discovered that a mounting bolt for the alternator had sheered off, leaving our main charging alternator dangling with inconsistent output. We were able to lash the alternator, but then found that the engine wouldn’t start. We then launched into dissasembling switches, polishing contacts, replacing fuses etc all through the electrial loom of the engine but to no avail.

Thanks to Andrew at A R Peachment Ltd in Norwich, we discovered that a tiny spade connector had come off a part of the starter motor at the very bottom of the engine, at the furthest point from our access hatch as possible. Now we have an engine that works, but this wasn’t the critical issue as we have other means to charge the batteries. With the sun beating down out of a white hot sky, our attention was galvinized by our dwindling fresh water supply as we use the engine to prime the watermaker. We were down to one 6 litre bottle left when the engine fired up again, saving us from some creative plumbing to feed the watermaker from another source.

Mechanics aside, our routing software told me that last night we topped out with a run of 307 nautical miles in 24hrs, a far cry from our smashing 360 in leg two, but not bad given the clement conditions. The wind has now turn to the right until its blowing nearly from due east, putting us in range for our big Cessna Citation spinnaker as we head for Charleston.

Last night we passed the border between Brazil and French Guiana and later today we will pass the most norther latitude of South America, leaving just the Caribbean to go. With 2100 miles to go, we now have less than 10 days sailing between us refreshing cool drinks and decent coffee or just a Starbucks Frappecino if I want complete hedonism in a single cup. I can’t wait

We lost a lot of miles last night thanks to rain. No, rain did not create an impenetrable barrier, through which we could not pass. But the clouds did. After celebrated our crossing of the equator and drank a celebratory bottle of Argentinian sparkling wine care of German, the Cessna Authorized Sales Representative, the clouds rolled in without pause.

Normally we get a solid puff of breeze that shoves us past the gathering storm cloud but this time we were trapped by a series of end of life clouds that had rain, but no wind. We turned in circles with slatting sails in the torrential downpour, our route looking like it was drawn by a hyperactive 2 year old with circles and zigzags all over the place. We tried to plot the position of the clouds by radar, but with the patchy wind we weren’t able to avoid them or escape them once they were on top of us. Instead, it looked like we wore a cartoonish rain cloud hat that stretched for miles in every direction.

Now the sun is up, we are playing with a new antagonist…. Sargasso seaweed! Comprised of leggy collections of scraggly “petals”, each about the size of a rose, they float in massive clumps on the surface of the sea. Collecting in patches the size of tennis courts or long rusty coloured streaks hundreds of metres long they explode into their constituent pieces at the passage of the boat. Except that one wily bunch clings to the rudder creating a geyser from the back of the boat. We then have to round up, slowing the boat until the reduced force of water allows the weedy particles to fall off, before continuing on our way.

And so we soldier on, limping across the oceans of the world