The east nor 'easterlies have been steady all morning and have now built to the 16-20 knot range. GWTW has kicked up her heels and taken off doing speeds of 10-12 kts most of the time. We have one reef in the main and a full jib and are trucking along nicely with the boat fairly flat and only being bucked around by the occasional big wave on the port quarter. The swells are around 1.5 metres with white caps, it is a cloudless day out here in the Atlantic and I'm busy cooking up batches of pumpkin soup to freeze.
Earlier this morning the executive decision was made to call into the Cape Verde Islands. We'll top up the fuel tanks, do a little sightseeing and wait out the calm weather pattern that is due around Saturday. Might as well do something constructive rather than sit at sea and listen to the sails flog about and drive us nuts for a few days.
Our AIS ship tracking device decided to go on holiday today. We still have the radar but it's always nice to have another system to give us information as well. For a while there we just assumed that there were no ships around as there were no 'blips' on the radar screen. Then Liam tweaked the AIS unit's wires and it sprang back to life. The Max Sea screen on our nav computer was instantly filled with icons of dozens of ships that were just over the horizon. And there we were thinking we were all alone out here, but in reality the cavalry was lurking just over the hill.
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| The view after our AIS system kicked back into life.....so many ships!!! |
We sailed for most of the day till around 1800 when the wind lightened and moved to the south. The mainsail and jib were doused and again we are motoring. With such a clear and cloudless day the sunset looked as though it was shaping up just right to see the elusive "Green Flash" that many a sailor speaks of. And yep that's exactly what it was tonight, elusive. Oh well plenty more sunsets to come. Somewhere between here and Barbados we hope to see it
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