1200 miles to go!

Days now go by in a routinely manner, having the long waited Trade Wind stably blowing from ENE between 15 and 20 knots. This means little activity is required to adjust the sails, apart from the moments when the wind reinforces for a few hours, or thundersqualls reach us.

In fact, we have the radar always on to detect on time an approaching squall; sometimes we are able to escape it, other times we prepare to face it (by partially rolling the sails and closing the cockpit with the lateral protections).

We are about to finish our fruit and fresh vegetable reserve, that lasted more than two weeks even thanks to the vacuum system we used to seal some of it. The last apple is kept for tomorrow…

We have become quite expert in cooking pasta in tomato sauce without boiling it in the water. We also use a lot the pressure pan so we are able to make an effective use of water and gas. Similarly, we made our personal record in getting a full shower with body and hair cleaning using only 5 liters of water!!! Still talking about resources, we are consuming more energy than we can produce with the wind generator (Windy – which works really well) and the solar panels that are hindered by the constantly cloudy sky. The main energy eater is the electric autopilots, though it provides a more accurate steering than “Pippo”, the wind vane. At night we often choose to switch to the electric autopilot, with the need to turn on the diesel generator the next morning. In the future we will need to rethink our energy system.

We are still eagerly scanning the horizon in search of sea creatures, but apart from a few birds and flying fishes we cannot report any spotting. We concluded, with a wise motto, that the sea creatures live below the sea surface.