3rd to 4th Nights at Sea (to Sunday dawn)

Friday daytime saw great downwind sailing as we made 6-7 knots for most of the day. During Friday night the wind eased off again and by Saturday vmoening our speed had reduced to about 3 knots. Friday night was another gloriously clear night with the shooting star display continuing and Saturday was another veey warm sunny day. 

With light winds from behind and a stable barometer suggesting little change we rigged the sun awning, normally only used in harbour. It made life much more pleasant. 

On Saturday afternoon we saw one container ship crossing our stern from west to east and then picked up a slow moving vessel with restricted manouvrebility on the AIS. I thought it was probably a tug engaged in towing but it changed its heading a few times until we eventually lost contact with it. 

I cooked dinner - a chicken pesto with potatoes and cabbage which seemed to go down well. We now have three meals worth of meat left in the fridge. Once that's gone it will be tins and dried food. We still have plenty of potatoes and onions. We had one of three pineapples after dinner and very good it was.

When I went to bed at 2200 we were still wallowing around in veey little wind and a sloppy swell which made the mode roll quite a bit and sleep difficult to come by, but after a while I felt the boat's motion change as the wind returned. At the change of watch I overheard conversation indicating that we were still heading East of North and therefore as I had indicated earlier, no change to the wind vane/ sails was required.

When I took over the watch deom Agustin at 0100 on Sunday morning our heading was 10-20°M and we were makiang 4-5k and had reached 42°, 05 North, just about level with the northern Portuguese/Spanish border.

When Mick takes bthe Watch at 0700 BST I think we'll change course and head further East.  We have up to date weather information but hope we'll get an update from Ian over the Yellowbrick later. Our last grib file downloaded before we lost contact with San Miguel shows Northerly winds and we actually have Southerlies! We also have this....

.... which may indicate more unsettled weather to come.

We did indeed change course and are now heading about 50° on a beam reach in a fresh SE breeze. The barometer has dropped a point and a half in the last 3 hours snd there are signs of a Low developing to our West.

And then sunrise brought this.....