Fw: Day 17 - Passage to the Caribbean
Misterx
Fri 18 Apr 2025 22:44
-----Original Message----- From: Mister X
Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2025 10:10 PM
To: web diary
Cc: Manuela Claite
Subject: Day 17 - Passage to the Caribbean
03 02.6S : 028 07.9W
17/04/25
9:30 pm
Day 17
South Atlantic Ocean
DTD : 2,140 NM (84NM)
50 shades of grey all around us, that is what greeted me this morning as I
got up... the sea, the skies, our mood...
It was bound to happen, we have been very lucky so far to have had so much
sun and all things considered so much workable winds. Finally, the Doldrums
in their full glory, not a breath of air, wall to wall clouds, and laden
horizon with loads of rain. No avoiding it...The engine had to be fired up,
for a good chunk of the day to keep up the forward motion going. We managed
to switch it off around 2pm and we were making progress, between 3.5/4 knots
of boat speed, but by 9pm, the wind truly died and the flogging if the main
became unbearable. The engine got turned back on, it will probably be on all
night, doing around 4.5 knots.
We got thoroughly wet today, a lot of intermittent rain, from light drizzle
to tropical downpours and anything in between. We had to have lunch inside,
which does not happen very often.
I have been peering at the horizon in front of us all day, hoping to see the
edge of the cloud. One of our weather gurus assured us that we were in the
middle of "solid but narrow bank - east to west along 2N - sat image
confirms - moderate rain\squalls" and that once we have gone through this,
it should all be fine, hopefully. This doesn;t feel like a narrow band of
cloud... it has been all day, and most of the night!!
A few ray of sunshine managed to pierce the gloom and gave us a magnificent
rainbow in the afternoon, and by sunset, we had a fabulous red sky, setting
the billowing clouds around us on fire. Red sky at night, sailor's delight?
More golden seaweeds floating past us... but not so much rubbish.
And we had a nice chat with another cruiser on the VHF, Spock, a 15 metres
sailing boat on it way to Uruguay from Cape Verde. He called up to check we
were ok as we were not moving much, we were not motoring at the time. We did
explain that we were taking a break from the engine.
Our nightly visit from a pod of dolphins was early tonight, we could hear
them splash in the dark. We could have done with the entertainment during
the day!
This is going to be a long, hot and noisy shift, but at least we are moving
forward, and hopefully by morning we will find the edge of the cloud, as
promised.
M