23 November

The night of the 22^nd Nov was rough seas and big swell, since this morning the swell has increased in height and it comes from the NW and the waves have the direction of the ENE wind with speed 12-16 knots.

There are clouds and sun it is warm and pleasant 25.5 Centi.

I bore you with all this navigational stories and I forget that you can see our progress on the SPOT. It is a pity that we can’t connect to see how it works.

The last 24 hrs we have done 194nmiles and 163nmiles on a straight line. We are now about 115 nautical miles from the African coast –Sahara region.

We cannot have proper meals due to the rolling so up to now we eat fresh salad brown bread, brioche (milk bread called in Spain), jamon and cheese. Energy wise we have our Air Generator keeping us company all the time and this afternoon we started the diesel generator to charge the batteries. Everything is working perfect with the exception of the auto pilot.

There was a reader who asked why we do not use our Hydrovane pilot, we thought of doing that but our course is such that we are afraid to use it and we want to avoid frequent gybes. With manual steering, approximately two hours each, we do not get tired and each one of us can rest for four hours.

At 11:30 we saw a boat in front of us without any sails, we couldn’t really see if they were in an emergency situation, so we decided to go close to them and see if needed something. When we came about 20 meters on their leeward side realized it was a 25feet Sadler, British registry (not in the ARC) with two young guys. We greeted each other, they were fine hoisting a smaller jib, they were fine so we took pictures and passed them.

Today, 2^nd day, we received a mail with sad news, S/Y Auliana lost her rudder, all crew safely boarded a SAR vessel and are going back to Gran Canary, unfortunately the yacht is slowly sinking. Sad story but glad for the people who had the chance to call for assistance and close to the Gran Canary.

Here life is normal, wind average 15 knots and we make an average of 7,5kts. Tomorrow weather permitting we will try to fix the auto pilot.

Gourmet dinner as I said is difficult to prepare so we had Penne with Ricotta sauce and plenty of parmesan.

It is time to go to get some rest and prepare for the 12:00 midnight watch.

S/Y ARMENISTIS