Having set a 20 minute alarm to remind me to check outside at that interval, I did the dishes and then tried but failed to get our weather routing software to work. Not a big deal but it would be good to be able to compare a computerised route with the one I had plotted manually. Mind you with the wind likely to be from astern or on the quarter for the majority of the passage there's not that much to calculate. The main objective being to work out the best compromise between direction and speed to achieve the fastest passage.
After a couple of fruitless hours at the computer I was feeling very tired and gave up the task. I was now half way through my watch and tired enough to sleep! I therefore kept the 20 minute alarm on and slept between each visit to the cockpit to check on things and in particular whether there were any vessels visible. I saw none and nothing registered on the AIS either.
Mick took over at 0700 local time and the wind picked up and our speed was back up to 5 knots plus.
I dozed for an hour during which a ship set off the AIS alarm and passed us within a mile or so. Mick said she altered course to avoid us.
I had a boiled egg breakfast and then we decided on our fridge strategy for the rest of the passage. We decommissioned the small fridge, transferred the meat and some drinks into the large fridge and turned the temperature down. That should hopefully reduce our power consumption noticeably. I also insulated the coolant pipes running from the compressor to the cold plate in the fridge box in an effort to reduce energy wastage. By good fortune we had some pipe insulation material on board!
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