Signs in the skies

Last night, during my two to six watch, I was wondering about something. On my night watch, the Southern Cross sits on my left hand side. Half moon was nearly above us, dimming the stars somewhat. Whilst watching the Southern Cross, a meteor flashed through the sky and ended straight in the center of the Southern Cross. At the same time a pod of dolphins arrived and kept me company where I was sitting on one of the bow dolphin seats. For me, this was confirmation about what I was thinking. It is the way my life goes. I always get signs to show me the way.

We've had precious little wind for the past few days, but we managed to keep on sailing. The wind angle was between ninety and one hundred and twenty degrees, and we rigged our top down furling Code 0 sail for the first time. Not very big, but it kept us going through the lighter breeze. Sometimes we had current in our favor, and at other times we were straight up against the current, costing us some speed. But we never despair. Knowing that the only constant factor is change, we patiently wait for the current to change in our favor again, and change it does.

This morning the wind starting veering more towards a south easterly direction, and it was time to change sails again. The Code 0 is not so effective with the wind coming in at one hundred and fifty degrees. We furled in the Code 0, and even though it is a top down furling Code 0, we still had to struggle a bit. Once furled we lowered the sail and bagged it before we rigged the gennaker. The gennaker went up beautifully and is giving us a better turn of speed.

As usual, the light winds is our biggest challenge, and the best sail in the world for these light winds is the Oxley Levante sail. I have proven it sailing over 7000nm, averaging 6.4kts and only 60hrs motoring. The best I have done before was 300hrs and averaging 6.2kts over the same distance with a similar yacht. And even this was wow. Using only 60hrs motoring over such a long distance is completely out of the ballpark, way out.

The Oxley Levante sail does spoil one a bit, and one forgets that not all sails are equal. On long crossings, we always take a lot of extra diesel with. On my current trip we didn't take any extra drums of diesel. We have enough diesel to motor for ten days, which will give us about 1500nm. Our next possible fuel stop was over 2000nm away when we departed from St.Helena , and we have no option but to sail whenever we can. And we are doing exactly that, doing our utmost to squeeze some motion out of the light winds. Stronger winds are much easier to sail, we can adjust the size our sails accordingly. We are expecting a bit more wind to come through tonight, and it should stay with us for a few days.

I hope you are having a great day, and wonder if you also sometimes get signs from above.

Until tomorrow

Paul

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