Day 3 at sea - July 3

By way of attonement for his temporary misunderstanding of the relationship between longditude and time, Mick did not call me until 0200 (BST). I'd therefore been off watch for a full 8 hours. Nevertheless it was a struggle to drag myself back into consciousness.

On getting out into the cockpit it was evident that we still had light winds and were moving along at around 3 knots. The swell had reduced a bit too and so for the most part the sails were no longer slatting and chrashing which is just as well because Mick must be in need of a good sleep!

The moon rose shortly after  I took over the watch and it's a very pleasant stary and moon lit night. There's phospheresence in the water but we aren't going fast enough to leave a spectacular trail.

The light winds continued all night and so shortly after dawn I hoisted the cruising chute again. A much smoother operation this time round. 

Quite a lot of cloud around this morning!

By 1100 the sky had cleared a fair bit and we are getting classic, British sunny periods.

Around 1330 we took the gamble to head directly for Madeira or as close as we can with the cruising chute still deployed on account of the still fairly light winds. On a beam reach with the mainsail up too, we are making around 5 knots on a course of 260°M with around 210 miles to go.

Mick cooked an excellent curry for a late lunch (around 1600) consisting of Portugese sausages and potatoes served with cabbage and pilau rice and washed down with VERY cold beer. Indeed the beer was too cold - consisting largely of ice!

Now, those of you familiar with the challenges of power management on a (relatively) small sailing boat may be rather surprised to hear this but it is true. The previous owners had installed one of those portable electric fridges when the original fridge failed and this remarkable device is capable of achieving temperatures of minus 15°C. However, to do so takes a lot of power. 

Thanks to the boat's two fairly new 130 Amp Hour domestic batteries and 330 Watts of solar panels and a wind generator...

we are able to run the fridge/freezer at -10°C and not run out of power. 

A cunning modification made to the fridge by the previous owners - a plastic chopping board cut to size and placed on a convenient ledge running around the inside of the storage area - with the temperature set to -10°C;  allows one to keep food frozen in the bottom and merely very cold on top. Meat and beer and ice trays go in the bottom and dairy type stuff in the top. The problem is that if one forgets to move the beer from the bottom to the top early enough, one ends up with frozen beer.

Of course, the temptation to have G&T at sea has been great but we have resisted! 

The light winds returned later in  the day and into the evening as expected, but in case they increased during the night, we doused the cruising chute at 1930 before I went off Watch at 2000. The result was a lot more slatting and clattering as the boat rolled more in the swell without the force of the chute to steady it. 

I was fearful of the affects on my sleep, especially given the Genoa car....

was positioned right above my head now that i had moved to the Pilot berth...

and so I lashed it in a fixed position in an attempt to stop it flopping about and banging.

That proved surprisingly successful or perhaps I was so tired I would have slept through anything because I had the best sleep so far.

[Update on the Genoa car.... It turns out that my 'fix' was not as successful as I thought. On taking the Watch Mick noticed it was still banging and that the cause was the gap between the car and the rail it slid on. The clever chap therefore dismantled a wooden clothes peg and used the two pieces as wedges.

So, the humble wooden clothes peg joins 'blue-tack' on the list of every-day household items that one should not put to sea without!

The wind and therefore our speed, picked up during the night,  as I discovered when I got up for a pee!