... this is what greeted me shortly after I took the morning watch, Mick having taken the late night one. It was still pretty chilly - three layers on top including oilies and waterproofs over my jeans. By 1000 on July 1st, the sun is warm and I'm down to jeans and t-shirt but there is still a chill to the North wind!
The night started pretty benign but around 2100 just as we were going eat the chicken stew i had prepared, the wind increased and we needed to make a course adjustment to the South to clear the end of the traffic seperation zone around the bottom of Portugal. So i decided to put a couple of reefs in and then alter course. I made a complete hash of it by only pulling down to the first reef cringle whilst hauling in the second reefing pennant. The result was a horrid setting mainsail.. Eventually I figured it out and got on our new course. It was about 2300 before we ate though!
I then got my head down whilst Mick took the Watch.
First job at dawn was to secure the bow anchor that was flopping about and making a horrid noise. Since rhen it's really been plain sailing, albeit still with two reefs in the main. We could probably shake one out but we're still averaging over 5 knots so I can't be bothered.
The only other event of any note by 1030 was the need to hail a passing ship on the VHF to make sure he could see us. He could!
1100 (01/07/21). Shook out the reefs to maintain around 5k. Mick got up!
The wind remained moderately fresh for the rest of the day and so we contued on a roughly SW course at 5-6 knots under the sun and blue skies; the temperature was warm to hot when out of the wind but its cooling affect was noticable.
Apart from me seeing a couple of birds early on, no wildlife of any sort was seen by either of us.
The only other event of note during the day was the announcement by the mate that he was considering writing an alternative log of the passage in order to record his perspective for prosperity. Keep your eyes and ears open!
We decided to adopt the same watch keeping routine as on our Atlantic crossing in 2016 on Arctic Smoke - 6 hours on and off over night with me taking the first 6 hours off starting at 1830 GMT (we're in the same time zone hear). The wind eased off around this time and our speed reduced to 4-5 knots.
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