shallow right up to tthe edge where the drop-off quickly falls to 3000m.
Like a fortress wall, the drop-off also blocks the current a bit and
creates a rather unpleasant choppy criss cross of small waves. I have
experienced it everytime I have left from Fortaleza. It is a bit hard on
the boat and when I woke up this morning I could feel my body had also
taken a bit of shaking around. Just no flow or rhythm to get into, the
motion of the ocean here is non-existent.
The waters at night also gets full of little fishing boats with their
bobbing whitish yellowish light showing the presence of such a vessel.
Not a big menace, but always the possibility of sailing into one so one
has to extra watchfull. We travelled about 140nm on this corrugated
stretch of ocean befor e we got to the deeper waters and conditions
started improving a bit.
Our speed however is great. We started with one reef in the mainsail and
genoa balanced to suit. As the night set in I decided to rather take the
main to second reef and once again balanced the headsail according,
making our sail surface quite a bit smaller. There was not much loss of
speed as we take extra care to trim the sails to perfection, and we were
comfortably sitting above 8kts. This whole operation of taking a reef in
I gave to Steven as he needs all the experience he can get, and kept an
eye on proceedings without interfering as the crew went through the
procedures. They are getting better at it as we practise it more and
more and soon I am sure things will be running smooth and fast when we
need to make a sail change. I also decided to reduce our sail area as we
are in the area where squalls can catch you unaware and easier to deal
with when the sails and boat won';t have to be stretched to the limit.
Our position at 10am on the boat, UTC -3 now, or 3pm in SA is
01*28'S/41*00'W. The equator is just over the horizon, about 150nm away
and by all accounts we should cross it within the next 24hrs. And
fortunately for the crew it will probably in daylight that they will be
swimming over. Only a small nautical term today, and aptly,'Man Friday'.
Factotum, handyman. The name of Robinson Crusoe's manservant in Defoe's
book of that name.
Have a wonderful weekend
'
Captain Paul
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