Ascension Island to Fernando de Noronha……Day 2
June 23rd, written the morning of the 24th, 2013 (Western Hemisphere) Time: Staying with GMT for now
We\’d had a lovely night and decided if the winds were below 20 knots, we\’d run the spinnaker during the day. First we jibed and it seemed the wrong thing to do so
we jibed back and put up the big kite. It\’s actually a small spinnaker for a boat this size, but it does really give us some speed.
We flew along doing 7.5-9.5 knots most of the day and as the winds built around 5:30 pm, we decided to take it down. After that, we jibed on to starboard tack and we\’ve been that way since yesterday afternoon. Full main and genoa for the night, easy sailing, lovely conditions.
We did 170 miles on day two and I cannot remember a much easier sail. The one thing that was a bit interesting was that we did have a noticable wind shift that undulated back and forth from E to ESE for several hours in a row. It would shift every 10-15 minutes and we had to compensate our course with the auto pilot. That\’s no big deal!
On my first night watch last night, we passed within 2 miles of a big ship. It was all lit up and didn\’t appear to be moving. He did not have AIS nor his radar on.
Don\’t know what to make of it, but it was the first ship we\’ve seen since night two leaving the African coast. The vessel also had \”restricted in ability to maneuver\” lighting on? Again…who knows?
Yesterday, we were able to get all of our four boat mini fleet on the HF radio at 1445 UTC. \”This Side Up\” was 380 miles ahead of us, \”Jongilanga\” – 70 miles behind and \”OZ\” about 850 miles behind us as they just left St. Helena en route to Fernando. They\’ll be skipping Ascension.
Not much more to report, 797 miles to go, we hope to be there on Saturday sometime…
REMEMBER SHOULD YOU WISH TO WRITE NIKKI DO SO ON THE DIRECT BOAT EMAIL (FOUND IN YESTERDAYS BLOG AND POSITION REPORT). Her GMAIL is not forwarding to the boat.
KIT,
Scott and Nikki