02. February 2013 · Comments Off on Trans-Atlantic Day 6 · Categories: Posts

Well we have turned west into the great unknown.
We have turned away from the last vestals of land and civilization in exchange for the open sea.
The sun, the moon, the sea and it’s creatures below become our new bed fellows.

I am not being too dramatic, am I?

We have been plodding along in the red haze and reached  16’40.597’N  27’16.684’W at 9am this morning after completing day 6 at sea.
The GPS says we will see land again in 1959nm.

We were getting tired of living in a ‘sand storm’ so we turned to wind and waves, dropped the main and rigged it up as a ‘poorman’s pole’, and reset the foresails out as goose winged.  We are now sailing dead down wind due west.
The twin head sail arrangement has lots of advantages.  It pulls the boat evenly through the water, so our auto-pilot had little work to do.  It is also easy to adjust the size of sail you have out.  Although with one ‘stunted’ spinnaker pole (see the swim it had on day one) we can not put out as much sail as we would like in lighter airs or rolly seas.
The ‘down wind roll’ does beat the ‘quarterly lurch’ as it is a bit smoother and predictable.

We were all up at 8am to what we thought was a pod of dolphins.  On closer inspection we realized we were being visited by whales.
Pseudorca crassidens: False Killer Whales
A pod of about thirty or forty individuals of all ages joined us for some play.  They bow rode, rolled and breached for over two hours despite my constant barking at them.  If you went below deck you could hear their squeaks and clicks as clear as if you had an underwater microphone.  A plural of sea birds tagged along obviously up for scraps during a hunt.

It was a joy to see them and we take it as a sign that all will be well on the crossing.

SOA Day 6 Click on image for clearer picture…

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