Day 2

All the books say this is a fast, comfortable and easy downhill sail. Huh! Most of the day passed in similar fashion to the first day – grey skies, winds of around 25 – 30 knots and seas of 2 – 3 m.  We kept the 4 reefs in the main and the genoa poled out during the morning.  After a fruit lunch (!) the conditions did ameliorate a little and the wind went forward a bit again so we were back on to a 2 sail reach. 

There is definitely a correlation between me preparing dinner in the galley and the wind and waves getting up – and yesterday didn’t disappoint.  Halfway through the dinner preparations we had to put the genoa away and downsize to the staysail.

Sailed all night with 4 reefs in main and staysail. The seas did flatten out a bit during the night so we were doing around 9 – 10 knots over quite a period of time.  Just as I was thinking that maybe I could make pancakes with bananas and blueberries for breakfast the seas started up again – maybe someone knows we need to lose weight after the excesses of South Africa! 

Wind has now died down a bit to around 20 knots so we are back on reefed genoa. Hoping for more trade wind like conditions in a day or two, but looks like we might have to negotiate some light winds first.

Just before we left we noticed that the solar panels were not producing what they should. It looks like one of the four is defective again. We’ve fixed it a couple of times now, but the corrosion inside is growing faster that our ability to repair it. However with not a sight of the sun for two days now, they wouldn’t be doing much anyway. Just means 2 – 3 hrs generator running every morning to charge the batteries.

Date and Time: 21 January 12.00

24 hours distance:  200nm

Position:   S29:46:485 E011:52:331