Crossing the Atlantic Ocean (Day 9) New Year’s Day

Well, what a difference a day makes! Having gybed just before sunset on New Year's Eve, which put the swell at a different angle to BV, Georgina's steering was much less erratic and so the night watches were much easier than those during the day had been. There was still a fair amount of weed overnight and throughout today too but the rate of collection on the DuoGen has been far more reasonable so we are only having to clear it a couple of times an hour.

Just after breakfast on 1 Jan we gybed back onto starboard tack, still with 2 reefs in the main but a full genoa, and have been happily steering a good course to gently close with our planned track all day. As I (Nicky) write (at 2200 local time, 0100GMT), the wind has backed around to the SE so we are now heading about 310 rather than our desired 280. Given that the full moon is up and it is really very light on deck, we may well put in another gybe back onto port tack at watch changeover at midnight. We'll see what happens with the wind over the next couple of hours.

New Year's Day was a beautiful day, with very little cloud, lots of blue sky and a hot sun. I took a couple of sun sights (one in the morning and one at the meridian passage, local noon) and, most pleasingly, found that the GPS was only 3nm adrift from my calculated position. Devilish clever those GPS chaps! Since the moon's so bright and the night horizon so clear, I've also taken a moonsight this evening. I'll try to take a couple more overnight (I get the 0400 to 0800 watch tonight as well as the 2000 to 2359 watch) and see how close I get to the GPS position with those sights when I have done all the working. The position line generated from my first sight doesn't seem too bad, though not as good as I would have hoped had it been a sunsight. But the horizon is more difficult to see at night - well, that's my excuse anyway! Interestingly, the moon was so bright in the sextant's telescope that I had to use a shade to cut out the moon's glare so that I could actually see the horizon (the shades are more normally used to protect the sextant user's eye from the glare of the sun).

There was great excitement early this evening as a ship, 'Adriatic Gas' overtook us. She appeared on AIS about 25nm behind us, on a course to overtake down our starboard side about 2nm away. We watched our AIS tracks carefully, particularly to make sure that our track (a little erratic as Georgina steers to the ever-variable wind direction, with lurches in the swell) didn't conflict too much with the ship's during those erratic swings. All was well but we decided to call the ship on the radio, both to wish them a Happy New Year but also to satisfy our curiosity and ask how far away they had seen us on their AIS. The answer was 8nm, which is pretty good going given that our aerial is only halfway up the mast and in front of the mast too, so there will be a certain amount of shielding. Not much longer after our radio conversation, we actually saw 'Adriatic Gas' appear over our horizon about 5nm away and then gradually overtake us and disappear ahead of us. So, there really is life outside our little saucer of water after all!

Position at 0001 Tue 2 Jan 18: N15 21 W046 02
Distance run 1159-1159: 151nm
Distance run 2359-2359: 146nm
Distance run so far: 1266nm
Distance to waypoint (just N of Barbados): 801nm

End of Day 9 position