End of Day 13 Beaufort NC USA towards Guernsey

This Blog entry is an edited version of the message we sent back whilst we were on the passage.  The original, without pictures, was sent by radio with a laptop that controls a modem connected to the HF/SSB radio.  With that set up we can contact one of the SailMail stations to send the daily text message to my daughter Charlotte in Guernsey who then forwards it on to a list of family members.

2359hrs (O, GMT -2) Wed 10 Jun 2020

Dear All,

Our minor drama overnight was that the generator shut itself down whilst we were charging the batteries and making hot water.  Nicky diagnosed that this was due to a blockage in the fuel supply pipe so on my watch I disconnected the priming pump, cleared out the blockage, which was a small amount of sealant from around the tank inspection hatch, primed the system and successfully fired up the generator again. Fitting the priming pump and lengthening the fuel supply pipes so that we can clear minor blockages like this one without having to remove the saloon table [Ed: not really viable at sea] has been a very fortuitous modification. 

A bit grey first thing…

Today started as a rather grey day and stayed as much until coffee and ginger cake time at midday when we started to see some blue patches.  It had warmed up considerably too by that point which was nice.  By mid-afternoon we had blue skies again so very pleasant conditions.

… but much better by mid-afternoon

During the morning we clocked up 2000 nautical miles sailed on this passage.  Last time we sailed 2000 miles in one go we arrived at Barbados and drank rum cocktails.  That seemed a worthy 'tradition' to establish on BV so we decided that sundowners this evening would have Caribbean theme with rum cocktails.

Flapjack production

The first shoots appearing in the propagator

Cooking was a theme for the afternoon.  I cooked up some Tom Kerridge baked beans, a recipe we got from Alex who cooked them for us when he last visited us in Guernsey.  We ate some of the beans for dinner this evening with ham and Nicky’s potato and sweet potato rostis.  Nicky also spent some of her afternoon watch baking flapjacks, which will go down very well as tuckbox treats on the night watches.  The seeds are starting to sprout in our propagator, so hopefully we will have beanshoot salad in a few days' time.  Just as well, as at lunchtime today we ate the last of the lettuce and cucumber.

We passed Chris Parker's waypoint (42N 40W) at 1400hrs and have continued sailing on directly towards the English Channel.  We've made excellent progress so far but we are about to hit an area of lighter winds and already by mid-afternoon the wind had dropped down to 10-15knots.

We received our new routing forecast from Chris Parker late in the afternoon and on the basis of that we are going to bypass the Azores and continue directly towards Guernsey.  We've turned to head a little further north to get around to the northern side of a ridge of high pressure building to our east and from there we will head east.  However, there are some much stronger southwest winds forecast for the middle of next week which are providing some food for thought.  We'll keep going as we are whilst keeping an eye on the predicted peak winds and, if necessary, make some adjustments to minimise our exposure to them.

No green flash at sunset today

Love to all,

Reg and Nicky

Passage statistics:

Position at midday 10 Jun: N41 59 W040 26

Position at midnight 10 Jun: N42 52 W039 07

Midday to midday distance through water (23 hours due to time change): 168 nautical miles (average 7.3 knots)

Midday to midday GPS distance towards destination (23 hours due to time change): 168 nautical miles

Midnight to midnight distance through water: 170 nautical miles (average 7.0 knots)

Midnight to midnight GPS distance towards destination: 171 nautical miles

Total miles covered through water: 2110 nautical miles

Approximate distance to go (GPS route to Guernsey): 1568 nautical miles

End of Day 13 Beaufort, North Carolina, USA towards Guernsey