01. February 2013 · Comments Off on Trans-Atlantic Day 5 · Categories: Posts

Trans-Atlantic  Day 5

This morning at 9am we were at N 21’03.33′ W 25’0.31′.
The GPS says we will see land in 2088 nm.

Not see land for 2088 nm, your joking.
Been going a little squirrelly on the humans for the past day.  Don’t know if I like the boredom for dogs.

I used to get a little ‘auntsy’ when waves broke on the side of the boat and down right ‘jumpy’ when water sprayed the cockpit.
But the humans found some old dodgers (cloth covers) that cover the guard rails from the back corner to just past the cockpit.
This has deflected lots of spray and made me more relaxed.  Normally they hate dodgers, because they restrict your view over the side (especially when the boat is healed over), but they made them detachable with shock cords and hooks.  This way they can put them up and down quickly on longer passages.  And this will be our longest for a while.

Yesterday morning when the sun rose it was dulled by an eary fog. The horizon was filled with it in every direction and it made you feel like you were sailing in a bubble, or the Bermuda triangle!  But it was not fog.  The wind was blowing maybe 20 knots and whipping up the waves as it does every day so far.  So what was this strange phenomena?
Then I looked at the still damp deck, warps (ropes), guard rail webbing and the sails.  They were all covered in the finest red SAND!
Sahara sand.  With the easterly winds the Sahara sand had been blown out to sea.  We continued in this mist all day, with chalky mouths and a muted red sun set.  We have woken to it again this morning.

We are hoping the winds and waves will ease a bit this afternoon and we will take down the main and run again on twin head sails goose winged and head west.  We want to start making progress west and we want to stop dying everything on our boat red.  Poor new sails.

Yesterday was just a few jobs on the boat for the humans, but they did catch me another tuna, but lost something big with a lurer.  It broke 130 lb test line!
Hope everyone is well and smiling.

SOA DAY 5 Progress, Click on image for better sized picture.

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